All Sorts

So my blogging virtually stopped about a year ago, when I came back from my studies in Europe... but recently there has been an increase in visitors to my blog.. which is awesome! and maybe puts the idea into my head to get this thing rolling again.
So I am intrigued... who is visiting my site, and what brings you here?? I know a lot of people that are strangers to me followed my blog while I was abroad and updating often, simply because family and friends of mine passed on the word.. but that activity virtually died when I returned to the States...
Does anyone want to leave a comment and share with me how they found my site, where you're from and what you're looking for?? I am genuinely curious and would love to hear about the people stopping by!!

Labels for Our Trunk

..we had an assignment in one of my classes in London called Labels for our trunks (we fondly called them, Junk for our trunks) we had three of them to write. the idea was that they were to be reflective pieces. they were to provide an outlet to reflect on what we had experienced.. and a few of the better papers were to chosen to use as advertising for the program next year. this is my favorite one that i wrote.. and it got chosen by my teacher to be used later. It's kinda long (remember this waaas for class, there was a length requirement) but i hope you enjoy.
i wrote it in mid march.. about a month before i actually came back to the states.. it kind of sums up how i felt (even though after i wrote this i had soo many experiences meeting more and more new people, in new countries.. having fun, enjoying myself and growing up all at the same time!

Comparing Notes
I had met a girl, in a beer hall in Munich, Germany. She was an American studying in Barcelona Spain, we were two Americans from the opposite sides of the country both living in two different European countries, meeting in a completely different country over a liter of beer. Her name was Brittney she was very sweet and we had a good time, we exchanged email addresses and went out own ways. She was a very fun girl, and I was excited when I got an email from her a few weeks ago saying that she was going to be in London for the weekend and she wanted to meet up. We decided to plan on meeting her last night in London. She said that she had really wanted to see a big show before she left. The Lion King was sold out, but we had both heard good things about the show Avenue Q you know, the one with the puppets. I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

I had told her to buy tickets to whatever show she wanted to see, and she had them when I met up with her outside the Odeon theatre in Leicester Square. We exchanged big, frantic girlie hugs you know the kind, with high pitched voices and lots of fast, acute hand movements. We were excited to see each other again and even though it was planned it still felt so random. We really were just strangers who had bumped into each other one night nearly a month ago now, you might dare call us acquaintances but we were meeting up for a night out in London. We were meeting up and going to a show that neither of us knew anything about other than it was supposed to be funny, oh and we knew it had puppets in it but that was just from the posters in the tube.

She had bought our tickets from some last minute ticket stand in Leicester Square earlier in the day. The show started at eight, and it was only almost seven so we went to a nearby coffee shop and brought our little friendship up to speed as of the last time we talked, in Germany. We talked about where our travels went from the night we met, where we were going to next, how school had been and of course what she had thought of London. We had no problem talking to each other, I think it’s a girl thing. It was as if we had been the best of friends for years. We casually exchanged blows and anecdotes as if we were inseparable roommates, it was random and it did feel a little bit distant, but it was so much fun.

We finally did make our way to the theatre, and once we found our seats and made ourselves comfortable our conversation strayed for a few minutes. Instead of catching up with each other our attention shifted to the theatre we were in. Our seats were in the first balcony in the first row, we were really quite impressed. Our last minute tickets had landed us really great seats and we were just wrapping our heads around the fact that we were really going to be seeing a West End show. This idea spun our conversation in a whole new direction.

We stopped just talking about us and what we were doing and we started talking about why we were here. We found ourselves really amused with the idea that we were twenty one year old girls, both in their third year of college meeting up with strangers in a number of different countries. We compared this with what we thought of Europe and traveling Europe before we had experienced our time studying abroad. We just couldn’t believe it, we never knew how easy it was. Sure we thought, everyone says they want to travel Europe. We found ourselves so amused with the idea that we were actually doing it. That we had both been to numbers of different countries, seen so many things, had life shaping experiences and made globetrotting friends along the way. We weren’t gloating or using this time to one up each other by listing places we’d been or things we’d seen it was a time of real revelation. We were realizing for the first time that we had almost become so comfortable with our new ‘European’ lifestyles, just assuming that this traveling we were able to do was a normal part of it all. We had forgotten how nervous we were about going to our host country only a few months ago, and the daunting idea of traveling around on our spring break, and it all seeming so far away. Well now we had done it, and done it with ease and grace. We now were booking flights and reserving hostels in different countries any free weekend we had without a thought of nervousness or doubt.

We had strayed so far from our state of mind we occupied only a few months ago. We were humbled at this transformation that had taken place right before our eyes, and we envied the people who were going to do this after us. I think we sat quietly for a few minutes, just smiling to ourselves. It was something so individual and unique that we were experiencing. Each of us from our own places, but the themes were universal and I think we were pleasantly surprised to be able to finally put it into words, and with a stranger nonetheless. It brought us closer, we still don’t know very much about each other like where we came from or what the other likes or dislikes but we were able to see eye to eye on what we were experiencing and realize what that was doing to shape us. We may have only spent two nights together, a matter of hours but we were on the same page, we understood where each other was going and why it made sense. The house lights in the theatre began to dim and our conversation was forced to finally cease, but we were ok with that, we had learned a lot about each other and had been shown a lot about ourselves.

goodnight

well, it's time for me to say goodbye to London. I've just about finished packing

This is what it looks like when London is going to bed... or waking up, depending on how you see it. :)

the eye

me and the eye :)

across the river

don't worry i have one of these without me in it ;)

it was late

piccadilly circus

violet and i in piccadilly after we saw Phantom of the Opera!

dome of st. paul's cathedral

st pauls from across the millennium bridge

the six of us stopped to take a picture on our way to dinner tonight (OUR LAST NIGHT!) and the fabulousness of this city rubbed off a little in this picture
mary, brian, maddie, st pauls, violet, brent, travis

Say goodnight to London everyone!
it's my last night here (for a while anyways) and it was awesome. Thanks for reading, I'll probably post something when I get home a little re-cap (for you and me) but thanks for checking this, keeping me diligent with my posting and being excited with me the whole time. Hope you enjoyed it (cause i secretly had a lot of fun doing this
<3

CALIFORNIA HERE I COME!! (are you ready for me?!?)

a little overboard

sooo i took a lot of pictures in Roma. Over 150.. heh. And as I was clicking on the pictures to put on the blog... weeding them out, picking the best or my favorite.. pictures of all the important things I would up only narrowing it down to 49. sooo yea, I might go through and take some of them out, but I'll be hard pressed to do so. So fasten your seat belts and be prepared for a long load for this blog :)
appreciate it!


sooo the first place I walk into after being in Rome for only a few minutes is.. go figure, Basilica Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri (St. Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs)
AND GO FIGURE mass started when I walked in! my timing wowie

after mass

Then I walked to the Colosseum and it looked like this

The Arch of Constantine from the Colosseum

and then from the ground.. with the colosseum back there :)

and then the main attraction

in the Imperial Fora - a series of monumental fora (public squares), constructed in Rome over a period of one and half centuries, between 46 BC and 113 AD.

i liked how there were bits of the marble tiles still on the ground, reminded you that it wasn't just grass and dirt back when.

inside Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore
AND GUESS WHAT STARTED WHEN I WALKED IN?! that makes two in one day.

this is the outside of st maria maggiore (at night)i like the mosaics you can see through the arches

and you can guess what this is.. and what time of day

this is the forum - was the central area around which ancient Rome developed

me! in front of Trevi fountain

heeeey Vatican City (can I count this as another country i've been to?)

inside

this place is massive

Michelangelo's Pieta

Raphael's Transfiguration

The Dome and the Baldacchino -take note of the writing along the top

angles

then i decided to climb all of the stairs to the top of the dome.. this is on top of the basilica that's the domey dome

Then i got into the dome.. and looked down at all the people. teeny tiny down there

ok so those letters i made you notice - they're 6ft tall!! woah. you can see the guy standing there (i put him in for height reference)

and those paintings over there.. they're actually mosaics!

then i started climbing again and made it to the top of the dome.

a view - if you'd like more see the panorama in the last post

then i went to the Vatican museum to see the Sistine chapel and i found Medusa's head!

a courtyard in the museum

the beginning of painted ceilings

woo

it looked like she flew up to the painting

i loved the colors

pretty ceilings

then into the Sistine chapel - i didn't take pictures (cause you're not supposed to) but the guy i was with did and hopefully he'll send me some ;) BUT IT WAS AMAZING. amazing amazing amazing.

i found this place on accident AND IT'S WHERE CAESAR WAS KILLED!!

then i walked to the Pantheon.. but there was a raging party

and then i almost got ran over by a car - a car with dark tinted windows. and then i got pushed around by these guys.

apparently the guy who almost ran me over, and also walked past me, and who the political rally was for was Berlusconi -Italy's Prime Minister

well since i didn't dare make my way through the crowd to get into the pantheon

i re-fueled
these are my essentials. a map, walnuts and a cappuccino

yeaaah

then the sun started to go down - so we ran to the Colosseum

woo

hellloO!

me in the park -again, see one of the panoramas below

goodbye rome!