Excuses

I just read through my last few blogs from this week. I can't believe how terrible my grammar is! I've been blissfully tired lately, and am not all there apparently when it comes to putting sentences together. My apologies for misspellings, fragment sentences, and any random words just thrown in. You get the idea well enough though, so I don't feel too terrible. I'll try to actually blog again before I come home. Until then, ... my excuse is going to have to be that I'm just really distracted with packing and shopping, that I am really rushing any blogs that I post. Sorry.

Ryan came to see me!

The best weekend here, was the weekend Ryan cam to visit. This is from Namco, which is basically an indoor amusement park. We got to drive bumper cars, and went bowling. It was fantastic.This is Ryan and I at Namco still.This is from the British museum. We spent awhile,...but walked around the entire museum. It was really nice to just relax for awhile, and completely fantastic to spend time with Ryan.He bought me this really beautiful bracelet in the museum gift shop.

This picture is from having dinner with Ryan the last night he was here. This is our picture in front of Big Ben. It didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, because it I couldn't hold my smile long enough. It took so long for Heather to have the opportunity to take a picture of us without other people walking in the way... oh well, we have a picture in front of Big Ben... YAY.

I was so happy that he was able to come and see me, and it was really hard to say goodbye again, but I am still enjoying London, and by the time I'm blogging this I'll be coming home in a couple days.
I'm so lucky to be with someone who would take the time and money to come and see me.

Ireland

We stayed down the road from Bunratty Castle in Shannon, then traveled by bus to the other cities that we visited. The first day there, we went to Limerick to see the Saint Patricks day parade. The parade had scads of girl scout groups, all in different colors depending on what club they were a part of. They were all singing the same song, and trying to out-sing the other girl scouts...it was really cute.

This is one of the many leprechauns that were included in the festivities.

These street dancers were crazy... too bad I couldn't get my video to work, I wanted to get one of what they were doing. At one point they were all going at the same time, and throwing candy to the kids between their dance moves. Everyone seemed to be having just a really laid back good time.

This was the cutest little girl. She would clap with the music, and even sang along with some of the songs. She was just so little, and looks so adorable in her hat, ... I couldn't help but get a picture of her.

The next day we went to Galway and hung out there. I have pictures, but they don't want to work at the moment and I'm not sure why. It was a fantastic weekend, and we had an amazing time. It ended with spending a night in the Shannon airport, flying for a few hours, then catching a train. The train ended up being stuck for about two hours because of a mysterious package found by the police at the station...the bomb squad apparently had to make sure of what it was. We were never told if it had been a bomb or not, just after a couple hours of sitting on the plane, we were aloud to move on to the station...makes me think it wasn't.
That was one long day.

Wales

This was the following weekend. It's an adventure weekend that when you schedule it, you get to choose two activities for your day of adventure. We chose Surfing and Coast Steering, so that Saturday, we started with Surfing until lunch, then went right back out for Coast Steering. That was hopefully the only time in my life that I'll have to wear a wet suit...they were really unflattering, and terribly hard to get on. The Coast Steering was hard for me mostly because I'm just scared out of my mind of heights...making the cliff jumping part of it horrifying. You get a real rush out of it, but I can't see myself doing something like that again.
Because these were water activities, I couldn't take pictures. The pictures that follow are from the hike we took the next day along the coastline.
It was really hard to pick just a few pictures for this blog. The landscape was breathtaking, and I took loads of pictures on this hike. We were walking all morning and just taking our time to enjoy the scenery. It was fantastic.

The pictures just don't do the place justice. It was absolutely unbelievable.

Holland

These pictures are from the weekend of the 23-25 of February. We took a bus to Dover, then the ferry. These are the white cliffs of Dover from inside the bus.
We had a little bit of time to get out and walk around, but by the time the bus had stopped, my camera was acting up, so I didn't get any better pictures. They were beautiful though.
We stayed in Amsterdam, in a hostel called the 'Hans Brinker' (I think). We visited the Heineken museum, Anne Franks house, the red light district, and spent some time walking around shops and taking in the city.
The rivers throughout the city added to the beauty. There are many people who live in little house boats lining some of the less frequented streets.
On any given street in Amsterdam, there are about three different paths. One for the cars, another for the bicycles, and the last for the pedestrians. The hard part is... the bikes go everywhere, and they will run you over. Often the bikes path and the pedestrians merge without you realizing it, and suddenly you find yourself in the middle of their path.
We also took a trip to Voldendam. Voldendam is a small fishing village about forty minutes out of Amsterdam.
In this village we went to the cheese factory, and this clog factory. We were shown how the clogs were made, and then let into this room full of expensive but cute clogs.
One of the many beautiful windmills in Holland, and the only one I got close enough to to take a decent picture of.

Chinese New Year in London

This parade started at about 11 in the morning and the festivities went on all day. The parade was the most colorful part of it though.
They really put on quite a show, these dancers in particular were really fun to watch.
Then came the dogs.... I'm pretty sure that's what they were anyway.

Yay for dragons.

Here it is trying to eat us. Scary stuff.
Not quite sure what I'm seeing. Fuzzy and colorful though.
Someone's punching Dave!

Fun little group waiting to leave the crowded streets. There's only so many times you can get shoved in all directions before you decide it's time to leave... there was seriously no room to stand without determined little Chinese people pushing their way past you.
Just in case I haven't said,... shown above is Dave, me, and Heather.

That's all for now... I'm going to Amsterdam in a few days, so after that I'll have many fun pictures from there. I'll be back to blog again when I can.

Brussels

This is from today. I only just got back from my day trip to Brussels, and am staying up to blog so that I don't have it hanging over my head as something I need to get around to...I have enough things like that already. The city is on a hill, and we started our walking tour from the upper end of it. This is what we saw as we came around the corner. It's just so beautiful.

Here is the Belgian Royal Palace. Allot smaller than Buckingham, but also used more for an actual home for the Royal family. I especially enjoyed the open gardens in the front.
Most of the streets in the lower parts of the city are small like this. While walking down this road, we had to stand next to the walls at times, and do our best not to get hit by cars coming through. Very cute little brick streets...with lots and lots of bikes like the one shown above.
Belgian waffle stands line the streets. This was the first one that I saw, and the only one based out of a van. I almost stopped here, but decided to wait until I'd eaten something real, to have these desert-like waffles.
These pictures are from the streets upon streets of restaurants...
Most had pretty much the same thing to offer, and were incredibly expensive.
I stopped into one with a couple of the other girls. The man decided to be competitive with the restaurants all around him selling the same thing, and offered us a free drink for coming into his place. The other girls ended up paying for three course meals. I bought a salad, but ended up getting my drink (wine), some bread, and my desert (on accident), for free. It ended up being allot less expensive than what they had paid for, and I had a really great meal.
These are just some pictures of the really cool old buildings that are all around Brussels.
This was a hotel!

Crazy expensive restaurants and pubs.
This is in the marketplace in the center of town.
Later in the afternoon, we decided to treat ourselves to some Belgian chocolates...the last one of which is sitting in front of me as I blog, I'm trying to be good and not eat it, but it looks so tasty.
The best part though, I'd have to say, would be the Belgian waffles that we got at this little sidewalk stand. The choices are many as you can see... with anything from a plane waffle, to toppings with strawberries, bananas, chocolate, nutella, cool whip, syrup, powdered sugar, and a whole lot more. For myself though, I got a waffle dripping in chocolate, and with lots of whip cream on top. Talk about a fast way to get fat.

In short, the food was amazing, the city was beautiful, and I am really glad I went. I am also incredibly tired right now, it's two in the morning and I'm going to try to get some sleep...maybe sleep in tomorrow (what a thought!). I'll blog again when next I have something of interest to show you. Until then...Good-night.

Snow!

As you can see we had snow recently. This is what it looked like in the morning as I was leaving for class. I was so excited, and was probably the only person out and about that had a smile on their face. The city isn't used to snow, and therefore aren't very prepared. The underground was stopped, and many of the classes that day and the day after were canceled.
My classes weren't canceled though, and I got to walk to class in this beautiful weather. It took me longer than usual but it just made me so happy. Not even slipping and sliding all the way there bothered me. By the time I got out of class the snow was gone, and there wasn't any sign that it had ever been there, ... except these pictures.

The Absolute Icebar

The actual 'ice' area wasn't very big, but it was amazing. Even the glass you drank out of was ice. They were hard to drink out of because they were square, but other than that it was awesome.From left to right, it's... me, Liz, Heather, Alicia, Dave, Steve, and Rachel. The cloaks were great, I felt so retarded wearing it, but it was crazy cold in there and it was totally worth wearing the cloak that makes you look retarded. Not that it really mattered anyway until I realized I was going to be blogging these pictures.
I didn't take others because it was so cold, and I had to keep my hands in my gloves as much as possible. You pay to get in, and have to have a reservation...you only get about forty minutes inside because they have to re-freeze everything and get it ready for the next group.

I'm still sick but feeling a bit better... going to attempt to do most of my homework this weekend. (it's a nice thought anyway).
I've fallen behind in my picture taking, so you actually are almost caught up. The icebar was last weekend. I'll try to start taking pictures again, it's just hard to have a camera always out without feeling like a complete tourist...I don't like that.
Anyway, I'll blog again later this weekend.