Pictures are up on facebook! I lost all the ones from Venice onwards when my camera got stolen, but Ashley has awesome pictures from the whole trip. She'll post them eventually.

It's funny the things you miss: obviously I really miss my passport and camera with pictures, but I'm REALLY bummed about the loss of my dental floss, coins from all the countries, and my Slovenian and Dutch ketchup. Where else am I going to get Slovenian ketchup??

The Barcelona hiding stuff gets much funnier...for instance, there was the day we went to bed at 3 a.m. and got woken up at 9:15 a.m. by the landlady buzzing in. We didn't know if the landlady was going to enter, so we flew out of bed and shoved the pull-out bed back in really fast and threw all our stuff out of sight and E. started making coffee so she could be convincing when she told the landlady that we were just over for breakfast. We changed our pajama pants and everything and sat, dying, on the couch. Naturally the landlady never came up.

Anyway, Ash says I'm not allowed to refute anything in her post below. Not that what she said isn't accurate. I will say, however, that "rock collection" is a bit of an exaggeration--it's only like ten rocks! And they're all from Ireland!

Flying home tomorrowwwwwwwwwww
X

Europe details...

So I haven't posted on this blog in awhile, so I decided it was time. I tried posting last weekend, but for some reason it didn't work. Then I was going to post when we got to Madrid (prior to May's purse being stolen) and the things I wanted to post were things I thought were a bit comical. AND, in light of the whole stolen purse incident, I felt the need to wait a few days for the humor.

Also a quick recap...
We flew from Madrid to Frankfurt yesterday and then took a train to Dusseldorf to spend the next two nights. My mom is in Dusseldorf right now, so we're visiting/staying with her. Tomorrow we take a train back to Frankfurt and then fly from Frankfurt to Chicago, I'm not looking forward to the long flight! But it will be nice to be home.

Okay, the humor...

#1. The Beach in Venice: So we were in Venice about 10 days ago and we decided to spend one of the days at the beach. So we wake up on the decided day and it is just POORING RAIN...it seemed like we didn't pick the right day. BUT, it cleared up in the afternoon and so we decided to head to the beach. First, it took us forever to get there, because we needed to take a boat to get to the beach island, Lido. Finally we got there and I have a towel (the one I'd been using for showering), but May had no towel (since she uses a tiny hand towel for showering). After we went in the water I came back and layed on my towel...May got out plastic bags, lol!!! She got out 2 plastic bags (from her purse) one of which she kept all her coins in. So May was trying to lay in the sun and dry off while balancing on 2 plastic bags and trying to avoid getting sand on herself...I took pictures, don't worry. LOL, this did not end up working out well, but the beach was fun!

#2. Also in Venice: We were getting ready for bed and May was getting something when she spilled one of her bags and it sounded as if something glass had broken...the people around us seemed concerned. Really, it was May's rock collection spilling everywhere and making lots of noise, lol...she quietly told the people around us it what it really was...haha.

#3. Barcelona friend's Apt: So May and I stayed with one of her future MIT classemates in Barcelona. She and her boyfriend had an apt. rented for 3 weeks in Barcelona and she invited us to stay with her. They weren't supposed to have guests sleep over (well guests were supposed to pay) so she said we should just lay low while we were there. When we arrived she had us put our backpacks in the closet (so the landlady wouldn't see) and when the landlady came to the door we hide in the bedroom, lol. So...May and I took this as we shouldn't really be seen in the apt. We went around Barcelona and when we got back (around 9pm) it was just May and I in the apt. Someone needed to come in and fix something, but May said she was using the bathroom, because we wanted this person to leave. After he left, we proceeded to eat our dinner in the dark and run to the peep hole every time we heard a noise to see if he was coming back, lol. We did this for almost 2 hours!!! LOL...Then when the guy finally did come back we decided it would be better just to hide in the bedroom so he could fix it. May's friends ended up coming back, as the guy was coming in and just asked him to come back tomorrow...then they found us hiding in the bedroom, LOL! They informed us that we really didn't need to hide, haha. The next few nights were fine.

#4. Beach in Marseille: I got burnt to a crisp...I put sunscreen on, multiple times, but it wasn't enough :( This is only funny because since the burn I have been leaving pieces of myself, in the way of skin peeling, throughout Europe.

#5. Sleeping in Milan: May and I had a bunkbed in our Milan hostel...I slept on the top, May on the bottom. At this point May had a lot of bug bites. One of the nights I woke up to May hitting and scratching herself, because the enitre bed was shaking, lol. She was trying to ward off the bugs with a lot of authority! It didn't really work as the next day she counted her total amount of bug bites and it was at 98!

That's all I got for now, we leave tomorrow!

Ashley

In Which Stuff Just Sucks

Okay...so I can't believe it's only five thirty here. SO MUCH has happened today, and almost all of it has been really bad.

Our train to Madrid was supposed to leave at nine thirty this morning, so we got to the train station at around 9:00 and Ash needed some coffee. So we went and sat in the chairs by the shops, and she went and got coffee, and we sat there for a couple of minutes while she sipped it. Our backpacks and plastic bags were on the floor in front of us, and my purse was next to me on the right. I was watching it the whole time.

Then suddenly we feel these insistent taps on our shoulders and we turn to our left, where the taps were coming from. This woman says something totally incomprehensible, and I thought she needed help, so I said Como? and she repeated whatever, and finally I said, lo siento, no lo entiendo, because I had no idea what she was saying and figured it was Catalan.

She gave this like really small smile and scuttled away kind of abruptly, and we're like, okay, that was weird, why did she ask us, out of the entire crowded station? A minute later, I reach for my purse on my right, and it is of course gone. This team was working together--the woman would distract, and someone would slip by completely silently and inconspicuously and take your purse.

Obviously this was probably the worst thing I could imagine, apart from physical injury. My passport, camera, all my identification, voice recorder, state ID, UW ID, Hostelling International card, money, credit and debit cards, everything was in there. My floss was in there! By some amazing luck I had just taken out my plane tickets and Eurail pass to look at them, so I still had that. We looked everywhere in the area, and I asked people if they had seen anything, and of course they hadn't.

So then I went to the police station in the train station and it took two hours just to file the report, because it turned out they had hit at least six other people before me! Some spaniards, some british, some canadian, some american. It was terrible. Luckily, I am pretty much fluent in Spanish, because none of the police officers at that station spoke english. It took the other people who couldn't speak the language twice as long to file the report.

Ashley helpfully contacted my parents for me and asked to cancel my cards, and is lending me money for the rest of the trip. But the fun didn't end there! Obviously, I had to get a new passport, so we called the Embassy and got the address, and it turns out it closes at 1 pm on Fridays and you have to prove it is an emergency. Luckily, I had my plane tickets, showing that we needed to fly home in three days. Also luckily, I had a copy of my passport from when I tried to get an MIT Federal Credit Union card from England (thank you Mahalia!!). So we went all the way to the consulate, which involved a metro and a train, and then I had to fill out all these forms. I had found a passport photo machine in the train station adn gotten photos taken, so it took about an hour plus a bit to get the new passport. Fortunately, that went reasonably smoothly.

We got back to the station around 2 pm, and tried to get our train tix to Madrid. Naturally, though, there was a strike today, and the windows for tickets for trains leaving today were closed until 4:30. Also, there was a HUGE mass of people all clotted up in front of the cordoned off line zone, waiting for 4:30 to come. So, we join this clot and wait for 4:30.

But then it seemed like EVERYONE was going to Madrid, and all the trains kept getting full, or they would only have first class available, which we couldn't do because our Eurail passes were second class only, and more and more people appeared until there were like three huge lines extending in every direction, and there kept being all these false alarms, and some Spanish people got REALLY angry and started intensely yelling at the train station workers (and I mean INTENSELY, this one woman was going so crazy they called in two policemen...in the US she would've been thrown out or sedated, but naturally here she got what she wanted), and every time they'd open the cordoned area a little bit, this GIANT swarm of people would push forward, including us by this time, and only like ten people would get through before it got closed again... this lasted for about three hours. The rest of the station was nicely air-conditioned but it was like eighty some degrees where we were just from all the bodies. It also smelled pretty bad.

FINALLY we got into line in front of an actual ticket window. By this point I had gone to a zillion service areas and explained my situation in detail in Spanish, and begged them to let us on a train because we had a ticket for this morning, and it wasn't our fault at all that we didn't get to use it, to no avail. So we were really worried there wouldn't be space. The people in front of us took forever, too, and then, three people before us, they closed our window and made us shift to the right, which meant of course that people tried to cut like crazy. FINALLY we got to an actual ticket person, and I made the reservations and everything, and he said the earliest train they had available for second class was nine pm (it was a bit before five pm at that time), so we were like, well, okay, and then he said 20.70 euro please, and Ash handed him her card (of course I have no money anymore), and naturally he says, "Oh, only cash accepted."

Thankfully he let us stand off to the side while she dashed to an ATM, because there were throngs of murderous people behind us and if we had had to go to the back of the line I would NOT have been pleased. Oh, I forgot to mention, at one point while we were waiting in the giant mass, someone jostled and a HUGE HARD suitcase crashed into the back of my head. I literally saw stars. There's a bump now. It probably killed all the brain cells I need for MIT, which maybe explains why I accidentally wrote that the issue date of my stolen passport was October 2008 at first. Ooops.

So now we're at an internet cafe, trying to facebook the pain away. I knew my year had been too good to be true! Barcelona had been so much fun as well--we had the most amazing tapas at a place called El Reloj yesterday. It was reasonably priced and delicious, I really recommend it. But I warn you, Barcelona has REALLY bad crime problems. About ten people had also had their passports stolen just today, and they were all at the consulate. I'm sure there were more, but those were the ones I met. One woman actually physically struggled with the thief. I heard about another woman who was dragged across the floor before her purse strap snapped. These thieves are professional and do NOT give up. The police are pretty useless, too.

So, I liked Barcelona a lot until today. Today was absolutely horrible. The only redeeming part was that Ashley got me a Snickers as a consolation present. Both of us are just sweaty and gross and exhausted, and I am also broke and lost a lot of great memories (pictures, passport stamps), not to mention money.

Oh well. I guess I've got unique souvenirs--no one else I know has a genuine Barcelona police report!

We leave for Madrid in about three hours...fly to Frankfurt tomorrow, and fly home on Monday. That will be sooo nice.

Boo thieves!

Hasta luego
X

Barcelona!

Huge shout-out to our awesome host and hostess, E. and N., in Barcelona! They are sharing their wonderful apt. in a sweet nbd. with us even though they don't even know us that well! Yet! And they said I could play Mariokart on their Wii with them next year at MIT! This is pretty awesome if you ask me.

Barcelona is beautiful--we visited the Palau de Musica Catalan (Palace of Traditional Catalan Music) yesterday, which is AMAZING. Catalan is also way more French and Italian than Spanish, if you ask me. We visited the Park Guell today, which features the work of the architect Gaudi--this was also great. and the weather is beautiful here--a nice breeze and sun. Lots of palm trees as well, which I didn't expect. Been speaking a lot of Spanish--actually, been speaking a lot of spanish all trip, which has been great. Also Chinese.

We leave for Madrid on Friday, and fly to Frankfurt on Saturday. Then off to dusseldorf for a couple of days, and then we fly home on Monday! I can't believe it.

We are both pretty ready to go home. Europe has been amazing, but travel is pretty tiring and we're looking forward to being able to eat and sleep like normal people, and not carry all our worldly possessions on our sweaty backs. Plus it is SO expensive here. Checking our bank accounts is very depressing.

In the meantime, though, Barcelona has been wonderful! Our combined pictures number almost a thousand, and with our photographic talent all I can say is you're in for a treat.

Hasta luego,
X

In Which I Post an Old Haiku and Inform People We Are In Barcelona

*disclaimer: I think haikus in English are pretty silly, because haikus are a pretty inherently Japanese thing and are just random conglomerations of five words when they're written in English, but hey, I was bored on the train and was too hot and tired for an ode. So.


HAIKU FOR THE ZIT ON MY NOSE**

Red and so painful
Glasses nose tab rubs against
Wow this really sucks.



**this zit has since subsided.

Meditations

It is natural, when one does something for a long period of time, to begin to question why the thing is being done. And so we have today's question: Why do we travel??

Well, one reason is certainly the Stuff. We all love stuff, even those of us who deny it. "See, I shop at thrift stores," is something you will routinely hear these people say, but this does not mean that they do not love stuff. We go to great pains to cart a bunch of stuff to our destinations, we spend hours searching for a suitable container for all of our stuff, and the first thing we say upon our return is, "Hey, look at all the stuff I got!" So, stuff is of course a great motivator.

But stuff cannot be the only reason. After all, it costs thousands of dollars and hours of vacation time, not to mention the headaches and the bug bites and the sweat and tears and public restrooms that travel naturally entails. With the advent of google images, travel channels, and the perpetually increasing amount of stuff you can buy in the United States (glasses windshield wipers being one example of the awesome variety), international travel falls more and more readily within the scope of our desktops and homes. We can visit Stonehenge, the Great Wall, Easter Island, all from the confines of our airconditioned homes, where we avoid the rain, the exorbitant expense, the queues, the sheer general discomfort, inconvenience, and embarrassment of being a foreigner.

Yet we still travel. Why? What is it that pushes us out of our neighborhoods, across oceans, into heat and crowded trains and breakfastless hostels?

I suppose for most of us it is about seeing something different, being somewhere new. This is not such a profound observation. Everyone loves to "discover" things. "Look what I discovered!" people will exclaim about things that have withstood millions of tourists and thousands of years. Tourists are always eager to note the differences. We make huge lists and pride ourselves on the addition of each new item. "In Munich, the traffic lights go green-yellow-red AND red-yellow-green," we might announce importantly, upon our return, and our audience will nod, awed. "Wow," they might say. "That's so different." Needless to say, from then on, you are the Germany Expert. Everyone defers to you, because, well, you've actually Been There, even it was for two days only. There, they do this, over there, they do that-we reduce countries to bullet points of differences. After all, we have to be ready to answer that inevitable question when we come home: "What was it like?"

Travel is one of those things that is sometimes best in retrospect. After all, it is not the actual act of traveling that most of us love, but the arriving. We do not miss the smelly stations, the crabby ticket masters, the rickety metros that screech like banshees along questionable rails. It is not even (for the most part) the moments we stood outside something famous, squished among throngs of people, thinking to ourselves, "Boy, I am standing outside something famous." Rather, the moment we remember sometimes surprise us-buying stamps at a post office, wading among trout in deliciously cool lakes at the foot of mountains so high they seem ghostly and nebulous at their peaks. Punting in circles. Eating breakfast in Prague and singing to Dido, singing the Barbie song in a Czech bar. Speeding past several countrysides with the wind rushing through the windows and lifting your hair. Memory streams out the bad and enhances the good. Prehaps, then, we travel to remember, to have something to tell, to prove to ourselves that we were up to the challenge.

Me, I take out a map every so often, jab my pen at the mass that is Europe, and marvel that I am an ocean away from home. I am here, and everyone else is there. How incredible that such an unbelievable thing can be, in a way, so insignificant. Imagine a movie, a camera panning your face, and then your upper body, and then the top of your head, and then the tops of the heads of hte people around you. Within four frames you are already lost.

Every day we see thousands of people we will probably never see again. We will lead thousands of lives, none of which will ever cross again. Yet at a single moment, say, 1:55 pm in Barcelona, we all chose ot be on the same Calle. That we can cross oceans. That lava bubbles at the center of the earth and simmers beneath our feet, that massive creatures of the deep lumber slowly in the silent depths of the ocean adn we bob unknowingly above them, thousands of miles from their realms. That they live in their own world, that everyone lives in her own world, that our world holds billions of worlds yet is made up of none of them. How incredible.

When we travel, we return to childhood. Everything is unfamiliar, unknown. We try to contextualize the things we do not know with the things we do. We are adults, after all. We are supposed to Have Information, to be Holders of Knowledge. Travel is hard, but perhaps it is hardest in this way. And this, possibly, is why we ultimately do it-to return to the emotions of our childhood. To once again feel wonder.

Going to Milano tomorrow morning!
sorry these posts are so boring. we literally never have any time for some reason.
ciao for now
x

We are in Venice and it is HOT. But we finally did laundry, so we don.t smell as bad as usual! This is a huge plus, mostly for the people around us.

We had an awesome time in Ljubljana. Shout out to our amazing hosts, J and S, who put up with us for a really long time. We even got to ride around in a spaceship car that talked to us and found us Chinese food.

Ciao from Venezia for the moment
X

Ok so I'm annoyed because I totally wrote a fairly lengthy post yesterday and it's not appearing! Anyway. We are in Ljubljana right now, hanging with my favorite math couple ever, and having a great time. Details later about a zillion Czechs doing the macarena and things like that....

X

we are in munich right now and going to ljubljana tomorrow. slight change of itinerary. still having great time though incredibly hot.

no time left!
love from deutschland
x

Danke

Ok so that's about the only German word I'll actually speak to Germans...otherwise it's pure English (or slug language as I am calling it here, since no one seems to understand all that much, but we can get the basics). We're in Munich now...it's pretty nice, the hotel breakfast was good today. And my lunch was awsome! Brat with saurkraut and a beer=great! We spent the morning in the city part of Munich, then went to a concentration camp in the afternoon...very sad, but the site is restored well. We're going to watch the soccer match tonight, should be crazy since Germany is playing. That's all...short and sweet.

Goodbye from Deutschland.

Random Updates

1. We are in prague, which is actually quite an accomplishment, as we know neither Dutch nor German nor Czech, and we left amsterdam, went through germany, and arrived in the czech republic. of course there was that minor thing where we got off at the wrong Dresden station and had to wait two extra hours and speak to an actual German person (ash and I were scared out of our minds to do this...i find the german language scary), but hey, we got here. so the hostel turns out to be a 2/3 star hotel! easily the cheapest and teh nicest place we've stayed at yet, except internet is CRIMINALLY expensive and we can't find an i. cafe nearby. so this will have to be quick (for real, broberg)

2. went to a grocery store today. Embarrassed the hell out of myself. Learned one czech word so far, which i asked for: thank you is something like "zhe koo-ee". Anyway, naturally i bought bananas, and i was like, "you know, i feel like i should eat some more fruit" so i got some oranges, adn then i went to the chck out and the guy gets to my oranges, and he says something that sounsd a lot like "vanesh?" at me adn waves them at me. naturally ih ave no idea what he means, and "thank you" doesn't seem appropriate here, so i just smile really big and kind of shrug and shake my head and gestuer vaguely all at the same time, and go "Ummmmmm" and he goes "ok ok one minute" and hops outo f his chair and returns adn slaps a sticker on it. i'm like "I'm so sorry!" in English and he's like, "is ok is ok." So I breathe a sigh of relief and can't wait to get out of tehre. then he gets to my bananas and gives me this look (he's nice though). then ashely comes over because she's done checking out, and apparentlyhe is hoping SHE knows some czech, because he waves teh bananas at her and goes "vanesh??" and she looks at me and then at him and goes 'Ummmmmm" and the guy behind me starts cracking up, adn this guy gives this resigned smile adn goes 'is ok! is ok! one minute" and leaves again, adn cmoes back and slaps anotehr sticker on my bananas. appparently here, when you buy produce, you have to put stickers on it indicating price adn weight. I did not know this. then, when i was trying to leave (you have to pay extra for bags so i just carry it), ashley, in trying to help me, smacks me in the head with my bread and causes me to stumble into teh basket, creating more chaos.

THEN, when we actually came home to eat teh stuff we'd bought, we discovered a couple things: (a) Ashley bought sour cream instead of yogurt, so she had strawberries with sour cream tonight, (b) the milk Ashley bought was NOT milk, but some kind of sour milk. Unfortunately, I had seen her investigating the dairy situation in depth, decided to elt her do the work for me, adn gotten the same not-milk. So that was a failure. (c) The bread I got (it was on sale!) is not what I thought it was. It has like coffee in it or something? But still edible. All in all, it was a very strange dinner.


3. We went pedal boating in Amsterdam! I really can't be on the internet anymoer because it's costing me a fortuen, but suffice it to say that a pedal boat would be a GREAT Christmas present for me this year. I could use it to get from my house to Sloan at MIT via the river, so it would obviously be very practical.

In sum: Amsterdam was brilliant (though very expensive), would totally go back some day when I (ideally) have more money. Ash and I had a lot of fun, spent WAY too much money, but did not fall into any canals and I think this is enough of an accomplishment.

Oh yeah, adn we went to the Prague zoo todaywhich is AWESOME btw (Angeline Jolie and Brad Pitt apparently visited last year, there are pictures of them up). We saw elephant genitalia pretty close up and let me just say, boy, am I glad I'm not a female elephant.

Some Stuff

-I have now learned how to say, in Dutch, the following words:
1. Hello (Hallo)
2. Thank you (Dank yu)
3. Good bye (pronounced: Doo-ee. do not ask me to spell this.)
4. I would like... (pronounced: Ich veal hraaarch. To say the last word, roll your "r" briefly and then cough up your gallbladder, but while rolling your tongue. Most of Dutch seems to involve coughing up your gallbladder and rolling your "r"s actually; Dutch people must be born with an extra supply.)

-A cashier at a Monoprix said "Ni hao, wo ai ni" to me when I bought a Fanta. HAHAHA. (This means: "Hello, I love you" in Chinese. After he said this I laughed and waved my arms a lot to indicate the feeling, "Ha ha!" because the only things I can do in French are order crepes and ask for bananas and count, none of which is an appropriate response. Then he got all embarrassed and said "No wo ai ni? No wo ai ni? Por qua?" or however you spell "why" in French.)

-Amsterdam is great. I love the rooftops/gables. Fact: the most expensive tulip ever recorded as a sale during Tulipmania was 13000 guilders, which could've bought you a canal. Fact: a house was once traded for three tulips. Fact: an average of one car a week drives into a canal. They didn't say if people were inside.

--Also in Amsterdam: unnervingly transparent public urinals. You'll be walking along, enjoying the beauty, and waves of warm urine smell will suddenly assault you out of nowhere. This is slightly unpleasant.

ok out of time

In Which I Write a Fake Sonnet

SONNET* FOR A SCARY CAFETERIA WOMAN
written on the occasion of our departure from Jules Ferry Hostel in Paris

You guard your baguettes as if they were crown jewels
You scar for life all who do not follow the rules.
Until nine in the morning you have infinite power
We dare not complain, though the juice is quite sour.
At eight thirty a.m. we creep out of bed
Repeating our prayers twice, thrice in our heads.
"Oh please let me not offend her today
Oh please let her count'nance be sunny, not gray.
For each euro be costing me 1.5 dollars
And I don't want my wallet to grow any smaller.
So I'd like to eat in the hostel today
Oh please don't let her turn me away."

We descend with knees knocking into your Dark Domain
(If you served anything but food we'd really refrain)
Those who have made it beam us sincere good luck wishes
They eat quickly and quietly and hand you their dishes.
If they linger too long they will regret it for sure
You will yell at them in French as they run out the door.
Oh people will think I am exaggerating
"That May," they will say, their expressions berating.
"Making mountains out of molehills is what she does best
Everything's a battle, a legend, a quest."
To the doubters I say, "Aha, I know I can be
Somewhat reliant on hyperbole."
But if you come to Jules Ferry I think you will come
to realize that really I have only begun.

Oh scary cafeteria woman! You strike fear in my heart
More than prelims and spiders and nude fat woman art
More than the dark or getting lost or too much sangria
More than wasps and bad breath and cold diarrhea.
You screeched at me when I tried to get another baguette
"Only two!" you kept French-ing but I hadn't had the second yet.
I tried to explain, but alas, to no avail
With echoes of "Deux!" I quickly turned tail.
The next day a boy behind me carried only a bowl
for applesauce, but he never reached his apple-bound goal.
"What are you doing" you barked, but French were the words
"Tray! Tray!" but "Blah! Blah!" was all that he heard.
He stood there and stared and tried to point at the 'sauce
But you'd have none of it, so, at a loss
He dropped the bowl on the counter, he turned and he fled
To this day he is probably still scratching his head.

Oh scary cafeteria woman! Today I sing your praise
A toast to you and all your reign of terror days.
Your gimlet eye! Your terrible swift sword! Beneath your gaze we quail
We try to outsmart you but we will always fail.
I see your hairnet bobbing and my throat, it starts to close
When I ask you for orange juice I focus on your nose.
Your fleshy arms, your quivering chin, your always lowered brow
In JF I lived in fear but I kind of miss you now.
In Cite Sciences** the ladies stand but we might not be there
They look not at us nor at themselves but hold a vacant stare.
We take our food and lay down our trays and eat and it is fine
But now there's no threat, no surprise, no rush of 'drenaline.
The French barrage, the massive chest, the fierce growl in your throat
The breakfast here just doesn't hit that adventurous note.
Besides I know your secret, the one you hide so well
Don't worry, 'sides this poem, I will never tell.
The day you kicked that poor boy out, and put him in your file,
is the day I saw you crack a--well, I saw you crack a smile.

*not in sonnet form
**second hostel we stayed at in Paris

In Which I Shamelessly Beg For Comments

Yeah, it'd be really nice to hear from you guys too...

In Which I have only one minute left at Ben and Jerry's Internet

WE ARE IN AMSTERDAM RIGHT NOW AND IT IS WONDERFUL.

LOVE FROM
DUTCHLAND

PS Dutch is really hard. Each word is like sixteen letters long, and seems to be composed primarily of j's.

nothing witty comes to mind

Just wanted to say that I am alive too and Ashley is not covering up a grievous Xiao Yu injury or something. Although I would not put it past her. j/k!

I'm pretty much half-baguette by now. On those census things I'll have to bubble in "other": "Chinese-American-baguette." Side note: An Argentinian guy complimented me on my Spanish today!

Okay, I don't want to take up more time on Yalu's computer, so I'm going to go now. Oh, and I have no idea why Ashley is saying "Anywho" so much. Also, I feel compelled (since Ash mentioned the floss thing) to point out that Ashley has been playing Jetman consistently, AND being in Europe has adversely affected her Jetman abilities. Even I took a Scrabulous sabbatical, come on.

Au revoir~
X

Walk, Walk, Walk and some Metro

Hi everyone, here's the basics of our visit in Paris...

Right now we're over at Yalu's apartment in Paris hanging out with her and Lucy (friends of Mahalia's, the friend we stayed with in England). So I can take more time, but it won't take as long to post because it's an American keyboard!!! Seriously French keyboards are really hard to type on, it makes your head hurt!

Anywho...

Some of you should be getting postcards from us soon...aren't you excited! You should be! Stamps are expensive and we made fools of ourselves asking for stamps...my French is lacking. But we were excited to send them, for real.

Anywho...

I saw Amber, my sister, yesterday and we did the Siene boat tour at night with her group. Basically the tour involved seeing Paris lit up at night, very pretty. The Eiffel Tour is much more impressive at night, it's VERY sparkly. During the day we went and saw Sacre Coeur, which is in the Montmarte area, the 'artsy' area of Paris. We also saw l'Arc de Triomph and walked up le Champs Elysees (very famous street in Pairs), there are tons of shops along it.

Anywho...

On Monday we went to the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, walked through the Louvre grounds, but didn't go in...basically we around the entire city both Monday and Tuesday.

Our diet has consisted of bread (baguette), cheese, yogurt, bananas and apples, pretty much since we've been here. The bread is amazing here and pretty cheap.

Today we went to Versailles Palace and hung out in the gardens, we ate lunch and walked through the famous gardens...we didn't actually go in the Palace, it was expensive to go in!!!

Other:
*May flosses after eating anything...it's kinda funny since she'll pull out her floss anywhere in Paris.
*Today, on the train to Versailles we sat by a couple and the man was wearing salmon colored capris pants...lets just say they were a little tight. It seems men in France wear their pants a bit tighter.
*In Paris there are TONS of couples everywhere and they are not shy about PDA...they make-out all the time!!! Everywhere you look.
*Lots of cute dogs, also lots of poo in the streets

That's all for now,

Ashley

in which i learn to despise los keyboards de france

bonjour!

that, along with sundry other phrases ("that dog is cute", "that baby is not cute", "i am (adjective)") comprises my entire french vocab. also the keyboards are SO DIFFERENT and thus i can only type about two words per minute.

i have discovered that paris - other than the keyboards - is not overrated at all. tis gorgeous and full of stuff to see do hear etc. i dont have time to go into detail here but suffice it to say that i amhaving a great time and our hostel - jules ferry - is awesome except for really expensive internet. thigh tonage coming along nicely.

umm i had a lot to say but now that all my brainpozer is being used to type i cant think of any of it. keyboarding classs must be terrible here.

saz the eiffel tozer today. it was quite eiffelly. seriously though it was fantastique. what else...well lots but my time is running out so i will go noz. aaah sorry for all the zs its in the place zhere the w usually is

gah

au revoir

x

Paris

We got to Paris yesterday, it was quite a journey.

We spent the day in Dublin, AWSOME city. We went to the old jail and took a tour...it was pretty interesting, TONS of info about Irish history. It was May's favorite thing so far.

We left Dublin around 630pm for Paris and arrived at our hostel at about 11pm. We ended up needing to take an hour and 15min bus ride from the airport to get to Paris. We have our own room here!

We're going to the French Open today!

Gotta go, time's up

In Which We See Two Look-Alikes and Some People Who Are Potentially Affiliated with WI

Hello everybody
This'll have to be short since I have 5:55 remaining and counting. Basically, some things that happened:

1. took the train yesterday from Dungarvan to Dublin. Saw a mini Matthew Braun. Train in front of us broke down so we were delayed 45 min. That's when I wrote my ode. Countryside absolutely stunning, so I didn't really mind the breakdown.

2. Got to Avalon House in the late afternoon, around 5:30 or 6 pm. It's supposedly the nicest hostel in Dublin? Walked around the TEmple Bar area, which is super sweet. Listened to some street music. ATe traditional Irish stew. Saw Katie Schultz look-alike! Seriously, twin status.

3. Returned to hostel around 11:30 pm, tried to get shower stuff together, only we are in 12 bed mixed dorm and three people were already sleeping. I pack everything in plastic bags, and it was pitch black, and i was top bunk...needless to say, this became very awkward very quickly. FInally took shower and slept on edge of bed because my stuff took up all the other space.

4. THis morning people STILL sleeping so had to go through stressful minimization of noise during morning routine. Some people left at 4:30 am so I woke up then, didn't really fall asleep again. People in bunks next to us had Milwaukee Brewers paraphernalia. Maybe WI affiliates? Saw old guy with Badger jacket on last night as well. Skinny ITalian lady in bunk opposite us glared at me all morning. Feel like she is not big Xiao Yu fan, due to all the plastic bag noise. Oh well. I'm not big fan of skinny Italian lady either.

5. Hostel provided breakfast of juice, milk, toast. Talked to lady from London here for conference. Now about to embark on Dublin sightseeing. Cheers.

In Which I Write an Ode

ODE TO CRUSTI CROC SOUR CREAM AND CHEESE CRISPS

In the evening they're lovely, in the morning they're neat,
No matter the time, they're always a treat,
Crusti Croc crisps, oh what a delight,
They're round and they're ruffled and they're salty and white.
They crumble and they crackle, oh what a sweet noise
They're one of my life's most delectable joys.
175 grams of cheer in a sack
Rushing me towards a sure heart attack.
But arteries be damned, for where can I find
such glorious flavors, though they inflate my behind?
Oh you all can do what you all well please
But my belly'll keep playing chip symphonies.
Oh crisp! Oh crunch! Oh heavenly munch!
Bursting with greatness in every last bunch!
Crusti Croc, you do make a really mean chip
Now maybe you can work on an accompanying dip.


PS We are safe in Avalon House in Dublin, our first hostel. It's very nice.

Dungarvan, Ireland

This needs to be quick because we are leaving for Dublin soon, but...

We arrived in Cork, Ireland on Tuesday evening. Then we took a bus to Dungarvan, which is right along the sea...the bus ride was really beautiful. Ireland is really green, they're not lying. Anyway, once we got to Dungarvan, Jenny (a close Eide family friend) picked us up from the bus stop. We pretty much relaxed the rest of the night and met Jenny's dogs, Fish and Chips, they're golden retrivers.

On Wed. it was raining most of the day, but it cleared up a little in the afternoon so we took a walk around Dungarvan. We went into the Dungarvan Castle and ended up seeing a video and getting a tour of the castle, though it is still being restored. The woman who gave us the tour seemed really excited to see us since there was no one else around. After that we walked along the bay of Dungarvan to see the Abbey and then walked along the beach. It's crazy here because depending on the time of day you are around the bay it can seem like a completely different place, due to the tide. In the evening, since it had cleared, Jenny took us for a drive around the bay and to the fishing port.

Yesterday it was beautiful in the morning, so Jenny took us for a drive through the mountains. We saw TONS of sheep and their little baby lambs...we also saw a little boy peeing, it was comical. Then in the afternoon, May and I rented bikes and we went for a long ride. At one point we stopped at the beach to relax. May collected rocks and shells and I, unsuccessfully, tried to skip stones. The view was great, the sea seemed to go on forever. In the evening we had fish and chips (the food, not the dogs, just to clarify), it was great again.

Today we are taking a train to Dublin where we are staying the night, then we fly to Paris tomorrow. Jenny has been a great host! Thank you so much for letting us stay here, we've been spoiled.

Ashley

In (Half-Hearted) Defense of my Punting

Let me begin by saying that Ashley is actually not exaggerating about how bad I am (for once). She might even have been too kind to me--"a few circles" is certainly an understatement. And I think I blocked the river twice. In fact, looking back on it now, I may just be the worst punter ever to stir the pristine waters of the Cam (fun fact: Cambridge = Bridge over the river Cam). Tourists gliding smoothly past us in the water on their guided punts pointed and took pictures. "Ha ha look at that silly girl, no one can be that terrible. She must be stationed here for our entertainment," I imagined them saying to each other, in their native languages. BUT I feel compelled to tell the whole story. You be the judge.

Defense: Part I: The Background

1. I have never been actively canoeing. The one time I have gone canoeing, I was the ballast, i.e. I sat in the middle and pointed out interesting sights along the way, such as ducks and boats shaped like Jersey cows. While this is of course as indispensable a position as any other, I did not get as much experience paddling the canoe as I might have. Ashley and Mahalia have both been canoeing; Patrick, M.'s friend from Clare College who got us a punt in the first place, is an expert punter. I was the true novice of the group!

2. I have weak arms. In taekwondo, kicking>>punching! The only thing I ever use my arms for is typing, and I type a lot, but no one can type their arms into buffness. To my knowledge.

3. I have poor eyesight and was wearing a raincoat with a ginormous hood. Every time I turned my head, the hood draped over my eyes. Plus, it was raining, and my glasses got all speckled. This made it even more difficult to steer, which is one of the reasons I accidentally punted us into a tree. Hey, the person who really suffered was me, since the others were sitting down and thus got a nice leisurely float under a beautiful willow tree, whereas I, who was standing, got smacked in the face by a wet branch.

Part II: The Circumstances

1. I started us off by popular request (Mahalia, Patrick, and Ash thought I should, I voted against), which just shows that democracy/majority rules really doesn't work all that well most of the time. It was very difficult to start, because the instruction I received was basically: "Punt." I didn't even know which direction we were supposed to be going (it was a 2 way river). So I just stuck the pole in and shoved, and it turned out I guessed wrong (the punter is supposed to stand at the back part of the punt), so I was told to make a 360 turn, which is KIND OF HARD, and so I tried to do it, and people kept yelling, "Turn! Turn!" at me, and I didn't know if they meant turn BACK or what, and then suddenly two or three other punts appeared out of nowhere, and there I was, rotating on an axis, trying to put all my weight into the stupid pole, and you know that part in the Sandlot where Scotty Smalls has to get the ball back in the beginning, when it's rolled by the Beast, and Squints yells, "We are WAITING..." Well, that's what I felt the other punts were beaming at me and I got all nervous. So then I crashed us into a wall, but that was good, because it let the other people go by, and then M., A., and P. pushed off from the wall for me and I got us going straight for a couple of seconds, and then gave the pole to M.

2. The stick/pole is EXTREMELY long and heavy. I thought we were going to harpoon a whale when I first saw it, or eat a very, very large shish kebab. 

3. The second time I tried, I was doing very well, actually, for a couple of minutes. Seriously, ask anyone. BUT THEN this Chinese guy came punting out of nowhere, leading a bunch of Chinese tourists, and I stared at his punting technique to try and imitate him, which was when we started heading for the willow tree, and then we bumped into him, which was my fault I admit, BUT THEN I straightened us out and we were about to head on our way when HE went wayyyy crooked and did a horizontal on us and completely blocked me, which was fine for HIM but not for me since I went careening into a wall again. Stupid guy.

Feel free to contact me for further defense points. I have to finish packing now, though, since we are leaving in an hour for the airport to go to Ireland! 

Punter out.

Punting in the Rain

I'm going to try to be brief because I'm not exactly the best writer...I don't have May's wit, oh well...read at your own risk:

Today was pretty relaxing, though I was tired most of the day. The morning started off with May and I taking a long walk around Cambridge. We walked by the river and more into the residential area of Cambridge. The walk was pretty uneventful, May and I were practicing our British accents during the walk (this was of course when no actual Brit's were around). Let me tell ya...we aren't good.

After lunch Mahalia met up with us (she had been doing work in the morning) and we went punting!!! One of Mahalia's friends goes punting frequently and had time to take us. Basically, when punting you use a punt (a type of boat that is a cross between a gondola and a row boat, it's long and flat on the bottom) and an extremely long pole which you use to push off of the river bottom to guide your way. The person who is steering the punt stands at the back (up higher than where you sit) and uses the pole to push the punt along. We went on the Cam river, which flows through Cambridge, and has great views of lots of the colleges. May started as our driver and it was quite comical...I'll just say we went in a few circles and had to push off of a few walls! It was great and really fun to watch, but it takes a bit to get the hang of it. We all tried and May tried again, we went in circles again, at one point we were blocking the entire river, LOL, but finally she got the hang of it. It was lightly raining most of the time, but it was completely relaxing. We went under tons of old bridges and by lots of colleges with lots of open green space and through willow trees haning over the river. Tons of fun.

Then we went to chapel at King's college, one of the most famous colleges. The building was awsome with beautiful stained glass.

Dinner was lots of fun, we went to a formal Cambridge dinner. We went to Magdalene College formal dinner, Mahalia hadn't been to this one before and she had a friend who could get us on the list. Well actually, May got us in, she pretended to be Mahalia's friend (who belongs to Magdalene College and is Chinese), Mahalia and I were here guests. We wore these black gowns, which are traditionally worn at these dinners and the person who belongs to the college is required to wear them throughout the dinner. Dinner was three courses, soup (tomato), lamb (with cabbage and potatoes), and some type of sponge custered plum cake. Basically it was fun to get dressed up and have a fancy dinner.

That's all for today, no bathroom issues today. I was so mortified yesterday, I had no idea what to do, but to wait, in the dark, for the bus to turn on!!! I was waiting in there for like 10min not knowing what to do. When that guy walked in I couldn't help but laugh, oh well.

Ashley

In Which We See Many Awesome Sights, but the Most Awesome Sight Ends Up Being on the Bus

Hi everyone,

This'll have to be short because it's already 11 am here and we haven't done anything, and we kind of want to do stuff before it starts raining, which it probably will in like five minutes. 

So yesterday we went to London. My first impression can be summed up in three words: London is awesome. I would totally live here if I had money. Which of course brings me to my second, unsurprising impression: London is expensive. But it was okay for one day. 

Things We Saw Which Were Great but Which You Should Really Just Google Because They are Huge Tourist Attractions (TWSWWGBWYSRJGBTAHTA):

1. Harrod's shopping area (super posh department store which was ginormous but closed, because it was Sunday and apparently stores can only sell for six hours on Sundays, so they open at 11:30). The glam of the glam.

2. 11:30-12:15: Changing of the Guard. Basically, the guard changes. It was still neat, though. Ashley keeps calling the groups of guards "the fleet of guards," so I will borrow her jargon temporarily, and then go back to making fun of it again later. We got there around 11:25 and the place was PACKED. Policemen on horses patrolled the roped-off areas, and hordes of tourists swarmed around the Buckingham Palace grounds. Then a bunch of soldiers marched out playing instruments, and we were like, "Huh, that's weird, they look Malaysian," and sure enough, they were Malaysian. We still are not quite sure why Malay soldiers preceded the guard yesterday, although I have a theory it is related to the recent diplomatic scandal that broke out between Malaysia and Britain over the Royal Army recruitment video. No idea, though.

There were these really long pauses so we thought maybe we would go; Mahalia was really certain that the fuzzy-hat guys didnt' actually come out of the gates, which would make it pointless for us to keep hovering outside of them. But luckily we dallied a while, taking pictures, and suddenly fleets of fuzzy-hat guys came marching out of the gates! So we got some extremely close-up pictures (they marched right past us...we keep lucking out), and then we left. So, if you go and really want to see the changing of the guard, be patient. It takes them like twenty-five mins/half hour to march out (they march out to the Wellington Barracks across the street and play music for a while. I don't know what they do afterwards since we left at that point). So, fuzzy-hat guys: check.

3. St. James Park. BEAUTIFUL park. Probably my favorite "sight" yesterday...I'm a sucker for parks. They had all this exotic waterfowl. A huge crabby pelican came right up to me and flapped his wings really hard...I think he thought I was trying to steal his mate. I don't want your mate, pelican! I was extremely impressed by his wingspan, though. There were also magpies and finches and pigeons (there are pigeons EVERYWHERE, but this is okay since they crack me up...have you ever noticed that a pigeon uses flying only as a last resort? 9/10 times they are convinced they can get away by running, and since every pace they take means one bob of their heads, they look like hilarious when they start sprinting away from you. "You'll never catch me now! I'm running!") There were also white swans and black swans, and their adorable cygnets. Also some birds I didn't recognize. Oh yeah, some collared doves, ducks, etc. Anyway. I would recommend picnic here.

4. Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey. Big Ben was a cool big clock. That's all I can say about that. Westminster Abbey we couldn't enter because it was closed on Sundays, but it was a very nice church. House of Parliament was an extremely impressive building (Ashley in particular loved it). We sat on a stone thingy outside of it and ate our lunch by the statue of Oliver Cromwell. I took some cool pictures of this structure; I would definitely recommend stopping by.

5. Other things we passed by: Wellington's Arch (very cool), Wellington Barracks, Imperial War Museum, various War Memorials

6. Tate Modern (Millennium Bridge leads up to it; London Eye, Shakespeare Globe Theatre, close by). Extremely cool modern art museum, although we didn't see much of it other than Level 3 due to time constraints. The wing of level 3 we saw was "Dreams and Poetry" which was dedicated to Surrealism--artists I noted: Joan Miro, Francis Bacon, Juan Munoz, Max Ernst, Cy Twombly, Picasso. Pieces I really liked: Hanging Figures (Munoz), Three Figures and Portrait (Bacon), Forest and Dove (Ernst). Met Sarah V. (housemate next year) at the Tate and headed to dinner together. So glad we got to meet up!

7. Chinatown. This is near Leicester Square for those of you following a map...luckily, we had Sarah for a guide, who goes to the LSE and knows the area fairly well. Ate at the Golden Dragon: we all shared half a Peking duck to begin with, and I had some hong shao pork and rice. Everything was delicious. Got to chat with Sarah about the upcoming year, shared some thoughts...it was a good time.

8. Woman. As M., A., and I were walking back to Victoria station (the bus station we needed), we saw a woman lying on her side on the ground, with several people around her. We walked over to see whether we could help, and asked if someone had called the ambulance (they had). Turns out she was a diabetic, we think she probably collapsed due to low blood sugar. Ashley got to try out her budding nursing skills, although the woman was breathing, so no need for CPR (plus, Ash didn't have the CPR mouth-cover thing, so it was a good thing she was conscious). She'd hit her head pretty badly, there was blood all over. We held a newspaper clamped to the back of her head to try and staunch the flow, and we checked her pulse and looked at her insulin pump. Luckily, the ambulance came pretty quickly. It turns out she's American, and she was completely disoriented--did not know where she was or what happened, did not want to get into the ambulance and get help. We thought our accents might soothe her, but they didn't, so we finally left because we didn't want to be in the way. That was pretty scary, actually--she did not look good, but like I said, help came quickly.

9. THE BUS. We finally arrive at the best part of the night. We board the bus at 8:30 pm to go back to Cambridge, and all three of us need to go to the bathroom, but we let Ashley go first, so she clambers out of her seat and goes to the back of the bus. Mahalia and I talk for about ten minutes, and during a lull in our conversation, I think, wow, Ashley's still not back? Is she really constipated or something? So I look back, and Ashley is standing outside of the bathroom, with this extremely sheepish air about her, looking really out of her element. She waves frantically at me to go back and join her, so I do, and it turns out the following had happened: she'd gone into the bathroom, and there was no light, but she really had to go. Also, there was a little bit of water on the floor and it generally looked kind of gross, so she'd done the public-bathroom-squat and been quite proud. She'd "peed forever," in her words. Then she'd fumbled around the teeny bathroom looking for the flush button, and found it. She'd pressed it. Nothing. Pressed it again. Still nothing. She tries the sink to wash her hands. Nothing. The beginnings of panic. Then she'd thought, maybe the bus needs to be in motion, so she stands up and kind of waits there, in the dark, for the bus to start. Then, all of a sudden, a dude opens the door and sees her there, just standing, scrunched in between the toilet and sink, in the darkness. "Oh! I'm sorry!" he exclaims. She explains, and he sits back down. Finally the bus starts moving again, and she tries to flush. Still nothing, only this time it RISES a little. She gives up. 

So the whole two hour ride, Mahalia and I really had to go, and we kept watching these guys get up, disappear for an abnormally long time, and then emerge looking extremely uncomfortable, as if to say, "That did NOT as planned." Turns out the stuff had sloshed all around, and Ash spent the whole ride hoping no one had seen her come out in the beginning.

All right, time to jet. More Cambridge today, and then fly to Ireland tomorrow! Peace out.

XW

In Which A Lot of Stuff Happens but We Have Little Time to Write About It

So it's 10:40 pm and our bus for London departs tomorrow at 7:45 am, and we got up really early this morning and went to bed pretty late last night, so I'm (and this will be hard to believe for those of you who know me) going to try and keep this short. 

Some comments:

1. Exchange rate: 2 USD ~= 1 GBP , 1.57 USD ~= 1 euro

2. Coins (that I've encountered so far): one pound, two pound, ten pence, 1 pence, 20 pence. I always get the one pound and ten pence mixed up, until today I guess when I got golden one pounds and the ten pence are all silver. So, I guess I still don't really understand the coinage. Not looking like an idiot at the cashier's counter is quite an accomplishment. As Ashley bragged this morning: "I actually got all my p together!" (p being pence) The 20p coins are heptagons, and the two pound coins are large, thick gold coins, which I like.

3. In Cambridge, a small coffee is about one pound 50 p. 

4. A National Express (nationalexpress.com) bus goes between Cambridge and London airports and greater London etc. and is in general very handy. You can purchase a "funfare" which means you have to have specifc arrival and departure times within a day; these are generally cheaper, although they increase by one pound with every person that purchases them. So, if M. got her tix for 9 pounds, I could get mine (if I were the next person to purchase) for 10 pounds. The amenable day fare for London-Cambridge round-trip is 10 pounds 80 p, so eventually the funfare becomes more expensive.

5. Ryanair is one of the cheap airlines within Europe, easyjet is another. Ryanair only flies out of Stansted in London, though, not Heathrow, and has very specific routes and sales, as well as a max of 33 kg and 81x119x119 cm for checked luggage, so I would definitely recommend using the airline but being careful about planning your routes and luggage. Also, take advantage of the sales as soon as you see them; they disappear arbitrarily.

6. A lot of the shrubbery on the Cambridge College lawns are pruned into this tipped over egg shape with a pointy top, which is apparently a popular style in the British countryside. No idea why. 

7. Isaac Newton, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Francis Bacon are apparently some of Trinity's alumni. No statues of women, though.

8. Sainsbury's is a pretty standard grocery store around here. Cheese is all white, and lunchmeat is all pork, turkey, chicken, ham, pork tongue, liver--no salami or bologna types. Sainsbury's basic is like the Shurfresh/Shurfine of Madison, so I bought a Sainsbury's basic pizza for only 99p, but it was pretty terrible. Oh well.

9. Kitchen at M.'s house is 9 guys, one girl (her), and they share 3 fridges and 1 freezer, except these fridges are like the mini dorm fridges in the US! I guess people go grocery shopping daily here, which is China-esque. The oven is convection, and most of the power is switched off until you need it. There are very few pots/pans, crockery, no napkins or paper towels, only one dishrag...I felt like a pretty wasteful person. On the other hand, I do think that being able to properly wipe your counters after cooking is pretty important.

10. Eating in the dining halls at Cambridge is referred to as "eating slops", and if you're a student, you can get away with paying three pounds for a very decent meal. I also had fantastic creme brulee at lunch one day. 

On Friday Ash and I walked around Cambridge as M. (who says it's okay to refer to her as Mahalia) had engineering projects going on. As mentioned in previous posts, it is GORGEOUS here, and very very clean (the rain seems to wash a lot away). So, our walk was very nice, although I very sadly did not manage to get asked for directions (which was my goal, and still is--I want someone to mistake me for a native before I fly to Ireland. It probably does not help that my British accent is rather lamentable). Colleges we've seen so far (and I mean Cambridge colleges): King's, John's, Trinity, Jesus, Christ, Queen's, St. Catharine's, Selwyn, Peterhouse (the oldest), Caius (pronounced "Keys"). A lot of people are still taking exams now, so everything was pretty quiet. Quote from when we first got here: Me: "Wow, the insulation in your house is awesome, Mahalia, WAY better than our house in Madison. You can't hear anyone!" Ashley: "Actually, I think that's just because everyone is quiet here." It turns out Ashley was right.

In the afternoon we had a full English cream tea in Grantchester Orchard. I skipped the tea part, and stuck with a cheese scone, a bunch of clotted cream, and raspberry jam. It was EXTREMELY good. Also, the orchard/walk to the orchard was beautiful. I chased some birds and mooed at some cattle as well. The fences on the walk to the orchard feature these rolly grate things to prevent the cattle from getting through, which I thought was clever. We saw houses with thatched roofs as well. Also, we "discovered" an interesting type of slug, and as Ashley was the one who noticed it first, I dubbed it "the Ashley." 

I cooked for all of us Friday night (tan pian with eggs and green beans, for those of you Chinese speakers out there), and I guess everything turned out okay because people ate it without grimacing too much. 

Today it finally stopped raining and was actually quite beautiful, which was great because A and I spent the whole day (8-8) visiting Avebury, Stonehenge, and Salisbury via a Roots Travel guided tour (which I highly recommend as an agency in general). It was 35 pounds for a student, which is quite cheap when you realize that these places are over 2 hrs away from Cambridge and quite a bit apart from each other, plus admission to places, etc. Our tour guide was named Matt and was very pleasant and informative, as well as a fast driver.

Avebury was very nice, featuring the largest manmade prehistoric hill, built by Neolithic man about 5000 years ago, either to represent the pregnant belly of a woman, or to allow people to get closer to god (the Sun). We also saw a double circle of stones, which was a very spiritual place back then, consisting of over 100 boulders (now reduced to 27, due to the Christians ordering them to be smashed because they were pagan, etc.). the tall skinny stones represented males, the short, wide stones represented females. In particular, the "obelisk" represented a certain male part, and a stone a bit of a distance away represented a vulva, and apparently at the summer or winter solstice, the sun would hit the obelisk in such a way that a shadow would fall through the vulva stone, representing the man entering the woman. The earth was the mother, the sky the father.

Naturally, Ashley and I wanted to take a picture of us hugging the vulva, but we didn't have time, unfortunately. Luckily, a short ways on, we encountered another male stone next to a female stone, so we hugged that instead. Prasanthi. ( We were not allowed to touch stones at Stonehenge.)

stonehenge was about 45 mins away, and very interesting. You can google the details on this because I really have to go to bed soon, but suffice it to say that there was a Chinese man and woman on this trip, and they'd found out a little earlier I could speak Chinese, so they were very relieved because they found it exhausting to understand English (they'd only been in the UK for six months), so I translated a bunch of stuff, and post-Stonehenge the man came up to me and said, in chinese, "So...it's just a big pile of rocks, then?" I really did enjoy it, though.

Last of all we visited Salisbury, famous for having the tallest medieval structure in the world, the Salisbury cathedral (though I find this a bit cheating, because it's only the tallest because of this gigantic spire at the top; Ash thinks Notre Dame is taller sans spire). The cathedral also houses the Magna Carta. We hung around salisbury for a bit and then went back to Cambridge.

Tomorrow we head to London and will meet with one of my future flatmates, S. at the Tate Modern cafe and head over to Chinatown for dinner! I realllllly hope it doesn't rain.

Oh, and we ate the most amazing fish and chips tonight at the Snug, and they weren't even mean about it when I asked for ketchup. Twice.

Rainy Day in England

Yesterday we spent the day touring Cambridge... it's quite nice, I would describe it as green and quaint, lots of young people.  We started by walking through the Market Square while M. was in class.  The Market was what you would expect; very colorful with lots of food, flowers, clothes and jewelry to buy (May got earrings).  When M. met up with us, after her class, we went to tour some of the colleges in Cambridge.  Cambridge University is made up of 34 different individual colleges.  The colleges, not the University itself, are responsible for admitting students, though students can have classes with students from any of the colleges.  Each college has it's own grounds; we toured St. Johns, Trinity, and Jesus, and walked by many others.  Technically we were supposed to be Cambridge students to be able to walk through these other colleges (M. belongs to Downing), but since we look like students we just walked through and nobody stopped us.  Trinity, St. Johns and Kings are the most famous colleges in Cambridge.  All the buildings look very historic and well kept.  There is lots of vegetation and tons of grass that is "forbidden" aka you can't walk on it and if you do, it's  likely you will be asked (potentially in an unkind way) to remove yourself.  Needless to say, we stayed off the grass.  

We ate dinner in The Hall, aka the cafeteria, that is on the Downing grounds.  The food was decent and pretty cheap, about 2 pounds!  Later May and I made banana bread and were hanging out in M. kitchen.  I guess we were too loud and one of M. roommates had to come down and ask us to be quiet, oops!  We had been in England BARELY 24 HOURS and were already asked to be quiet... we are truly loud Americans, lol.  Seriously though, it's really quiet here, especially compared to our house on Broom St.!  Anyway, we felt bad, but the guy just seemed annoyed so we tried to keep it down, though May said she had been trying to be quiet, lol.

Overall the day was good, though it RAINED THE WHOLE DAY!!!  I'm really glad I brought a rain jacket.  That's all I have to say, I don't feel like writing a lot more, May will fill in the details, even if some are false...We were NOT BLED ON BY PIGEONS (see previous post).  There were lots of pigeons around us and one had a cut foot and it was walking all over.  So basically the blood was on the ground and not us, needless to say it was gross.

Ashley 

WE SAW THE QUEEN

But only for a second. 

Still! Ashley and I got pictures of her (not exactly close-ups, but pretty cool anyway)...she was in a nice car, naturally, with a million guards, including a really tall, skinny, bewildered-looking guy in a fuzzy hat (I also took a picture of him...I thought he looked more interesting, to be honest). She was scheduled for some kind of public appearance elsewhere, I guess, and Ashley, M. (our hostess), and I were lunching outside of Buckingham Palace, in the park by a bunch of fountains and statues, and suddenly we were like, "Hey, why are there a million people standing by the gates?" And then, just as we walked over to check it out, this cavalcade threaded its way between the giant gilded gates and everything started flashing (cameras). So we all grabbed our cameras and elbowed our way to a semi-clear spot, and snapped pictures in her direction, and I got her in the bottom left corner of my picture and Ashley got her in a black-and-white shot, so hers is a little blurry. If you zoom in on mine, you can actually see her pretty clearly, I'll try to post it later. She's the woman in blue-green. 

I guess most people never get to see the Queen in person in their entire lives, so we were really lucky, but to be honest, I was more impressed by the fact that we got through customs in like five minutes.

So. Brief impressions of Buckingham Palace area from XW:

1. Kind of drab. The walls are really gray and weatherbeaten. However:

2. The park around it is very beautiful. Lots of chairs and benches and a huge green lawn area; statues and fountains very nice; ate a "Yogurt Corner" which was tasty. 

3. Would NOT want to be a palace housekeeper. 

Rewind to flights. These were smooth, although I will include a detailed review of Air India, for those of you who may be interested in using the airline, as it is extremely cheap (ours were a little bit less than 700 USD each including taxes, for ORD-->Heathrow and Frankfurt-->ORD). Only comment about my PHL-->ORD flight was that I had to sit next to an extremely large man who kept looking at me every time I took a bite of my Symphony (my fav chocolate) bar, which got awkward.

Ashley and I had around eight hours to while away at O'Hare, so we decided to get something to eat and read. I had a McD's quarter pounder meal with a Scientific American; Ashley had some kind of wheat/lettuce sandwich thing with Glamour and Oprah magazine. Those of you who know both of us will probably find this to be an extremely accurate representation of our personalities. 

We boarded at 7:30 and departed around 8:40 (central time, p.m.). The following are my impressions of Air India:

Positives:

1. Good food. We had dinner and breakfast, both very satisfactory. Dinner was a spicy chicken curry (there were fish and veg options as well), with potatoes, cauliflower, and tofu (the tofu kind of surprised me), as well as a pink thing neither of us ate which I think was supposed to be dessert. I'm pretty sure it tasted good; we were just full after the entree and salad. The salad was pretty fresh, and the roll quite nice. Breakfast was a croissant, fruit, and orange juice, which was perfect for me. 

2. Great service. Steward/esses were constantly patrolling the aisles, proferring coffee, tea, juice, water, etc. They were also extremely kind and they walked past your seat like every five minutes.

3.  The tickets are extremely cheap (as mentioned).

4. Good flying. The ride was VERY smooth, and the landing absolutely fantastic. I get airsick pretty easily, and I dread the landing, because my ears feel like they're about to explode and my stomach gets very queasy, but this time literally one minute we were in the air, and the next we were on the ground. It was incredible. 

5. The screen on the seat had GAMES, not just movies. I played Hangman, Checkers, Caveman, and Gobble the Snake. Those of you who are ex/current TI-83 Silver users: do you remember Block Dude?? Caveman and Block Dude are of the same spirit. It was great. For details, see me.

Neutral:

1. Coat hook! I thought this was interesting, but Ashley refused to let me put it in a "positives" category, because she said she's seen it before and putting a coat on it would have made things even more cramped (see "negatives"). But I was intrigued, so we put it in neutrals as a compromise.

Negatives:

1. SEATS. The seats seemed to be designed to minimize comfort. I don't think any conventional human could find a single comfortable position on these seats. I didn't sleep at all, and Ash slept extremely poorly. There was this weird contour thing at the back and the neck, which I eventually tried to stuff with the poor excuse for a pillow and a blanket. Needless to say, we were all sore and stiff, not to mention exhausted, afterwards, but the smoothness of the ride and the perfection of the landing made me a lot less crabby about this than I would have been otherwise.

2. My screen was broken, so I couldn't watch any movies, which was really unfortunate, since Golden Compass and The Great Debaters were playing, which I would have liked to have the option of seeing. Oh well, the games made up for it. 

3. It was extremely hot and cramped. Even with the air fan things, it was still hot and stuffy, and the girl in front of me (who happened to be from UW, actually, we heard her say it--in fact, she was traveling with Meena's sister--we kept looking at them at the gate and going, "Is that Shanti??" but we were too wimpy to ask) did not endear herself to me by reclining at a 60 degree angle. She gave me a really dirty look, too, when I pointed out that she was balancing on my knees.

All in all--I would fly Air India again, for the price and the smoothness of flight, but don't expect to get too comfortable. 

We arrived in Heathrow about fifteen minutes early, and went through customs in about five minutes, which was a huge surprise to us. We half-expected to see customs officials running after us when we left, since we were sure we had forgotten to do something. We chilled out at the Central Bus Station, since our tix weren't until two hours later, during which time we brushed our teeth and got bled on by an injured pigeon. At 12:30 London time, we got on a bus for greater London, where we met our hostess M. Then we visited the British Museum for about two hours, where we saw pieces of the Parthneon and some Middle Eastern exhibits. Then we got on a bus back to Cambridge, where we are staying for the next five days. 

Impressions of London/Cambridge:

1. Very, very, very expensive. If you are planning on traveling, notify your bank--I think most are ok, but I couldn't use my debit card at all yesterday since I didn't tell my bank and they thought someone had stolen it and was trying to use it outside the US. I called in and it's ok now. Anyway, it's 2 dollars/GBP (pound), and about 1.57 USD/euro. Not only that, but things are more expensive here as it is. So, that's not so fun.

2. Beautiful. London is really a beautiful, very chic city; the Greyhounds here are definitely nicer (they have seatbelts!), it's a little odd adjusting to the roads, it does get rainy a lot (although right now it's amazing, 75 and sunny), and Cambridge (the campus) is extremely green and leafy and there are really nice soccer (football, I guess) fields etc. 

3. The porters at Cambridge U. scared the crap out of me...I guess students are only supposed to have one guest for two consecutive nights max here, and she's trying to get two of us in for six nights, so he wasn't very happy about that. Ah well.

4. Guy on the bus in London got really pro-UK, anti-US on us...M. leaned over and asked me if I knew if Malta was in the Commonwealth, and I thought she meant the EU, so to clarify, she said, "No, I mean the British Empire," and this old man, staring straight ahead, didn't look at us once, said in this very snotty tone, "Malta is a free and independent nation of the Commonwealth," and M. said, startled, "Oh...thanks," and then we were going to resume talking and he interrupted with, "So is Bermuda...in fact, this is true of all the nations of the Commonwealth," and we were like, "Thank you for the info..." and turned away to resume convo, and then he said, "At least we take care of our houses. Not like you. Just look at the Philippines. We always improve the countries; you destroy them," and he went on in that vein for a while, and then he and his wife moved to the other end of the bus. Hm.

5. This is a really really really great place to be if you can afford it. Like I said, it's beautiful.

Yesterday, after we got off the plane, we looked like hell, we felt like hell, we probably smelled like hell too...but we were looking, feeling, and smelling like hell in LONDON and that is making all the difference. 

-love from the UK

PS By the way, the link "xwale" is "xw" + "ale", our initials, NOT "x-wale." 

Here's my first post, this is exciting. All I have to say is packing for 6 weeks has been one of the most difficult things of my life!!! I'm freaking out that I'm forgetting something really important.

THANK YOU TO OUR HOSTESSES!

Also, I wanted to shout out to our fantastic hostesses in Cambridge, Ireland, and Barcelona! And possibly Switzerland. You guys are very, very much appreciated, and dinner is totally on us when we get there, as long as it's not fancy dress, since backpack space limitations have severely depressed our hotness.

THE ITINERARY

Dear all:
Ashley thought it might be a good idea to post our rough itinerary, so here it is; please ignore the random notes to ourselves: (by the way, Ashley will eventually also post to this blog...I just figured out how to invite her two seconds ago):

***

Wed., May 28-London, arrive around noon. 

Tues., June 3-leave for Ireland.

Friday, June 6-Leave by train from Waterford to Dublin.

Saturday, June 7-Fly from Dublin to France.

Friday, June 13-Netherlands.

Wednesday, June 18-Germany.

Saturday, June 21-Czech Republic.

Tuesday, June 24-Austria

Friday, June 27-Slovenia

Sunday, June 29: Italy

Saturday, July 5: Switzerland.

Tuesday, July 8: Spain

July 12: Germany

July 14: Fly home.

***

Tomorrow we embark on our Exciting Adventures. And don't worry, if we don't have any Exciting Adventures, we will certainly make them up for your entertainment.

Scrabulous sabbatical

By the way, I am taking a brief sabbatical from scrabulous. I'd feel kind of ridiculous if I spent all my time, say, thinking up a word to counterattack P playing "sleazo" or "ptui" or something while Ashley is off seeing the Magna Carta and the Prado and castles and whatnot.

So, all my games will be inactive until the end of July/beginning of August. My apologies!

T-3

Yeah, I just want to see how this looks. We haven't even left yet.

Preliminary Observations:
1. I hate booking things.
2. This is going to be really expensive.