Prague

I have returned from Prague a much happier person. I was definitely beginning to get stressed out because of all of my papers that I have due soon and because the semester is almost over and I have barely seen London. Prague completely changed my perspective though. It is an amazing city. It is one of the prettiest cities I have ever seen, the buildings all look like dollhouses, and it is in my top 3 favorite places I have ever visited (Ireland, Hawaii, and Prague). I'm no longer concerned about getting straight A's here. If I get them that's fine, but I'm not going to spend the rest of the semester studying. I'm learning so much more outside of the classroom anyways, so if that means going out and experiencing London, yet getting B's then so be it.

Friday we arrived in Prague, checked in to our hostel, and met up with some of our friends who had arrived earlier in the day. We went out to a wonderful dinner where I was able to try banana, lime, and sour cherry flavored beer. I really hate beer so I didn't like them too much, but they were interesting. Dinner and dessert were delicious. Dinner was Pivovarský dům which is roasted pork, bohemian dumplings, and sauerkraut. The only thing I liked better than my blueberry stuffed dumplings with cream cheese sauce dessert was the price. Dinner, 3 beer samples, and dessert was under $10. That evening we simply meandered through the city and crashed fairly early.

Saturday we woke up early to take a walking tour of Prague. It was the best thing we could have done. We saw the Old Town, the Jewish Quarter, we took a cruise down the Vltava River, and then visited Prague Castle. It amazed me how old everything in Prague was. I mean in London you hear about buildings being built in the 16th or 17th century. I saw buildings in Prague that were built in the 10th century. Workers started building the castle in the 9th century. The Jewish Quarter was especially interesting. I never realized how everywhere in Europe was affected by World War 2. 80% of Prague's Jewish population did not survive this time period. In fact, a vast majority of Prague's synagogues are no longer active because they do not have enough members. Jews were confined to a small living area in Prague and it was so full of disease that it was destroyed and completely rebuilt in the 19th century. The Jewish Cemetary was unbelievable. The space allotted for a cemetary was so tiny that they were forced to bury people on top of eachother...in some areas 12 people occupy one grave. It is estimated that over 100K people are buried here...yet there are only 12K gravestones. We also saw the famous Charles Bridge. Built in 1357, it is the oldest bridge in Prague and the 2nd oldest in all of the Czech Repub. The river cruise was really nice. It was cold, so we sat inside and sipped on hot chocolate. Lunch was at a cute place where I was able to try another traditional Czech meal...svickova which is beef in a cream sauce accompanied by cranberries and whipped cream on top of a slice of lemon. This was by far my favorite meal. The Castle was breathtaking. That evening we went out to the largest nightclub in middle Europe which was great fun. It was 5 stories and each floor was a different music genre. We actually hung out on the Oldies floor and listened to Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson for a few hours.

Sunday was an extremely busy day. First, we climbed the Old Town Hall Tower to witness brilliant views of the city. Next, we wandered over to Charles Bridge and enjoyed looking at paintings vendors were selling while listening to some music. We also climbed Petrin Hill which is exactly what it sounds like...a hill. On top of Petrin Hill is a replica of the Eiffel Tower. When combined with Petrin Hill, the lookout area is comparable in height to the observation area of the actual Eiffel Tower. It was gorgeous. Next we visited the Loreto, which is a beautiful church, and then we revisited the castle to see Golden Lane. Golden Lane is a very cute little alley next to the castle with very old and tiny homes. The famous author Kafka once lived here. Dinner was a wonderful beef goulash that I am going to try and make when I get home. That evening Paula and I said goodbye to Billy and my roommates Maura and Meg and then went souvenir shopping. When the owner of the store realized how much we were buying, he kept exclaiming, "I love Chicago! Such friendly people live there and friendly people have lots of friends to buy souvenirs for!" haha.

Monday Paula and I strolled around the city. The Czech Republic is known for garnets, so I went to a jewelry store and bought a really nice ring. Other than that, we just walked around until it was time to leave for the airport. We did stop to have a Czech pasty called Kolache. I was so excited when Paula told me about them (she is Czech and her grandmother makes them) because they are what the Polish call Klotchsky (spelled very wrong). They also have Punchsky there (spelled incorrectly as well) and potato pancakes. I remember having all of those things every Fat Tuesday. Yum.

If you ever get the chance to visit Prague, I highly recommend it. I had a wonderful time there. It has been my favorite trip this semester so far. I can't wait to return.

Lately I am feeling so fortunate to have this experience. It is amazing how much I am learning here. Incredibly, most of this learning isn't in the classroom. Not only am I learning about the history of Europe and different cultures...I'm also learning a great deal about myself. I've gained so much confidence in my ability to be independent (I was fairly independent prior to this trip, but now I realize that I can handle any type of emergency situation), I've become more outgoing, and I've learned to stand up for myself. I've also made some amazing friends. I really believe that everyone who can take advantage of an opportunity like this should. If it wasn't for my family and friends, I'd never want to go home.

I will try and get the Prague pics up tomorrow, as well as my Berlin ones and some random London ones.

This Last Week

I'm sorry I haven't been updating lately. Nothing exciting has been going on (except for one really big thing which I'll get to in a minute), so I've been a little embarrassed to update. This week (and next week) prove that I am actually STUDYING abroad. I am hoping to start, research, and finish 3 major papers by next week so that I can go out and experience London without worrying about schoolwork.

This past weekend was amazing. Friday afternoon I was researching a paper when my boyfriend called. I asked him what he was up to, and he said he was walking around campus. All of a sudden, I hear one of my London friend's voice on HIS end of the phone! So I ran all the way down 3 flights of stairs and sure enough, there stood my boyfriend with the prettiest flowers ever! He flew in for the weekend to surprise me for Valentine's Day. Since he got here in the late afternoon, we didn't get to do a whole lot. I showed him around our neighborhood, went out to dinner, and then walked around Picadilly Circus. Saturday we went out to breakfast and then spent the day shopping in Knightsbridge. We did end up at Harrods, which was absolutely beautiful. I was there in 2003 but last semester I saw a program on the secrets of Harrods on the Travel Channel so I appreciated it this time much more. One thing I recommend for anyone going to London is to go to Harrods and eat in their food halls. We had gelato at Morelli's and it was unbelievable! They create these beautiful gelato sundaes that are almost too pretty to eat. I ate mine of course, but at least I took a picture of it. It's totally worth it to wait for a spot at the counter. I felt like a little kid in an old ice cream parlor, when in reality I was in an extremely busy part of Harrods. Saturday night I introduced him to Kabobs. There is this tiny place right down the street from us that has amazing food and is open until 4:30 am (VERY rare around here...even pubs close at midnight). Kabobs is the place that everyone in the house goes to when they're craving chips (fries) or kabobs...which is at least a few times a week. Sunday was a fairly relaxed day. We ate breakfast and wandered around the area a bit more. We ended up back at Picadilly Circus again and ate at a fairly good steak house. We had such an amazing time and I'm so thankful he made such a huge journey to see me for such a short amount of time.

This week has been nothing but classes and writing papers. Last night our Theatre class went to see Corum Boy which was by far the best play I've seen with this class. If anyone ever has the opportunity to see it, I strongly recommend it. It was visually brilliant and the acting was phenomenal.

Tomorrow morning I leave for Prague. I won't be back until around 1 or so Tuesday morning...yes I am skipping a day of class to go, but it's already been preapproved :).

Next week will be busy, but after that I will have time to upload my pics/hunt other people down for pics of me, and actually start exploring the city and writing proper entries on here.

Have a great weekend!

Back from Berlin!

I'm back! Berlin was absolutely amazing. I actually enjoyed Berlin more than I enjoyed Paris. Unfortunately, you can't do everything there is to do there in 2 days, and the extremely cold weather didn't help either. That's ok though, that just means I have to go back ;)

Friday was our relaxing day. We got to the hostel and decided to rest for a little while. I fell asleep watching MTV's 'Next' and 'My Own' in German lol...they're just as horrible in Germany as they are back home. That afternoon we saw the Brandenburger Tor, Paris Plaza, The Reichstag, and then we wandered our way over to Potsdam Plaza, where we saw a few pieces of the Berlin Wall. I didn't realize that little pieces were scattered around the city. I thought they just left a few chunks of the wall where they originally were (they did this too though). Right in that area is the Sony Center, which is gorgeous. Berlin is an extremely modern city, for obvious reasons. The Sony Center is this area where they have a film museum, an IMAX, and restaurants, etc. under a dome outside. Everything was so pretty, and the falling snow added even more to the atmosphere. We ate at Lindenbräu where I had Berliner Kartoffeisuppe mit Kaisser (Berlin Potato Soup) and a Brauhauspfanne mit sauerkraut und nknödel (a special brewery plate with sauerkraut, pork, some other meat I couldn't identify, and pretzel dumpling). The food was amazing. I love German food. I really need a recipe for pretzel dumplin now. Next we headed over to see an IMAX 3D movie in German...yup we're cool like that. We actually saw the documentary on sea life that I wanted to see in London haha. It didn't start for an hour and a half, so we went and got dessert (a waffle soaked with Baileys and topped with ice cream) at a place in Sony Center called Alex. We still had time after that, so we decided to wander around the area. We saw some cool buildings in the distance that we wanted to see, so we walked in that area. All of a sudden, Lauren noticed a stage and thought there was a concert. We rushed over there, and lo and behold, there's a movie premiere taking place. Yup, we stumbled upon Cate Blanchett opening her new movie, The Good German. If you want to see a good quality pic from this event, you can go here. If you want to see poor quality pics and video, you can check out my picture page in the next few days. Billy managed to push his way through the crowd, but Lauren and I just held our cameras high in the air and hoped for the best. The video I took actually turned out great...I zoomed in right on her! What luck :). Afterwards, we went back and saw our Sea Life movie, did some shopping (I bought a new spring coat!), and returned to our hostel.

The next morning we got up early, had a wonderful buffet breakfast at the hostel, and were picked up by a tour company for the first tour of our trip. Our plan was to see Sachsenhausen, the first concentration camp purposely built to be a camp. It wasn't an enjoyable tour, but we all thought it was an extremely important tour to take. I learned an incredible amount on this tour, so much that I can't type it all here. Before Sachsenhausen, old factories were turned into camps. This was the first camp built for this purpose, and was the model camp for all of the others that followed. The Nazi headquarters were here, and most trains heading to Auschwitz and other major camps came through this camp first. There were no death camps in Germany, only work camps, but still an estimated 50-60 thousand people died here. These camps were originally used to detain Communists, but obviously that quickly changed. After the war, the Soviet Union had control over the area in which Sachsenhausen is located. They actually took over the camp and secretly detained Nazis there. Thousands more died at this point. After the Soviet Union was finished with the camp, they destroyed most of it. It is mainly a large grassy (and in our case, snowy) area now. There are lots of museums and we did see a barracks, the crematory, and the morgue, as well as a few other places. It was extremely cold out and my feet were completely numb. I think I preferred it that way though because if it wasn't for the cold, Sachsenhausen would have almost been a pretty place. I feel that good weather would take something away from what this experience was supposed to be. I did take a few pictures here, but I haven't decided yet if I'm going to post them or not. I almost feel that it would be disrespectful...we will see. After the tour, we went back to Alex to have dinner (I had pork). Our plan was to go on a pub crawl that evening, but when we arrived we realized it was a huge waste of time and money, as all of the free beer was outside in the cold. Instead we went to two cute places and ate some more. I could tell that I am starting to miss home every once in awhile because that night I ate a ton of cheetos, and I absolutely despise cheetos haha. We also went to an Indian that I think was called Amrit. We shared a really good chicken dish with rice and a sauce that had cashews, almonds, and raisins in it.

Sunday we attempted to go on a free 3.5 hour walking tour of Berlin with the same company that runs the Sachsenhausen and pub crawl tours. We started out good, but only lasted 30 min. due to the cold. We did get the history on the Brandenburger Tor and Paris Plaza though. Brandenburger Tor was originally the gateway into the city of Berlin. The city expanded so much over the years, that it is now in the center. At the top there is a statue of a female sitting in a chariot which is driven by 4 horses. A long time ago, the french stole this statue. Years later, the germans somehow stole it back (I was really cold at this point and missed some info, sorry). When the Germans returned it to the top of Brandenburger Tor, they renamed the female, Victory. They also renamed the square that the Brandenburger Tor is in, Paris Plaza hahaha. What's funny now is that the French Embassy is not only located in that square, but also in the direction which Victory is looking haha. The US Embassy is currently being built there, there is a Starbucks in there, and the hotel that Michael Jackson dangled his baby from is there as well. After we saw all of that, we decided to take a bus tour instead, as my feet were completely numb and Billy and Lauren were equally freezing. The bus tour was nice, but we didn't really get to see everything up close. We drove by the Berlin Cathedral, Checkpoint Charlie, big pieces of the Berlin Wall, etc. but I didn't get any pictures. That's ok, I definitely want to go back to Germany, so I'll see everything then. After the bus tour, we went to Fassbender & Rausch which is an amazing chocolate store. We shopped a little, had some tiramisu, and returned to the hostel. We then packed our stuff up, and headed for the airport.

Overall, I had an amazing time in Berlin. I can't wait to go back....in warmer weather. The city was much more modern than I expected, and I found more people spoke English here than in Paris. This was definitely the best trip yet.

I will try and post pictures today or tomorrow. This is a relatively slow week, but I would like to try and get some papers out of the way. I'll let you know when they are up!

Berlin!

The weeks keep going by so quickly here. I can't believe it's already the weekend! I guess it helps that I only have class 4 days a week.

Today I got up at 6 am, wrote my 2,287 word research paper, and turned it in at 2 pm...crazy. 2 papers down, 4 more to go. I think it turned out fairly well...not my best work, but not bad.

I was a little delayed getting to the library today because of the weather. Today London had its biggest snowfall in 7 years...a grand total of 4 inches. It's so funny, the tube was complete chaos. Every line was severely delayed, and each train was packed. I actually had to let 2 trains go by because there was no room for any additional passengers to get on. What normally takes me 20 min. took me over an hour today. London reacts to snow almost worse than Wichita haha.

In 5 hours I leave for Berlin. I'm so excited! I was really looking forward to Paris, but I'd already been there so I knew what to expect. I have no idea what Germany is going to be like. We're having a champagne party in a few min. to celebrate our papers we turned in today, and then I need to start looking up stuff to do in Berlin!

Have a great weekend!

Week 5

Wow...I can't believe I've been here for over a month! I really need to get more organized and actually START sightseeing in London hehe.

Well, Wales this weekend was a bust. If you can't say anything nice, you shouldn't say anything at all, so I'll refrain from saying what I truly think about the tour company. After they failed to send me the itinerary on multiple occassions, I went to pick it up myself Friday night. When I arrived for check in at 7:45 Saturday morning, no one was there. I found out at 8 that the trip had been cancelled a week earlier...which doesn't make sense since I booked the trip 2 days beforehand and picked up the itinerary the night before. Oh well.

Instead of sitting around being bummed, I had an exciting weekend in London. 2 of my roommates (Maura & Meg) and I went to a 3D Imax screening of Wild Safari 3D: A South African Adventure. Click here to read about it. I really enjoyed it. I'm such a sucker for documentaries, especially when they are 3D. There are definitely a few more I'd love to go see. After watching the documentary, we randomly began discussing musicals, particularly Wicked. Maura had seen it twice before on Broadway, but Meg & I had yet to see it. The three of us decided to try and get tickets for that night. We went to the theatre (as we've discovered the half-price ticket booths in Leicester Square aren't nearly as good of a deal as the student discount at the theatre) and to our amazement, an afternoon show was beginning in 30 min. We definitely got tickets for 25 pounds in the SECOND ROW. Yup, we're awesome like that. The musical was really good...definitely the best one I've seen here so far. If you haven't seen Wicked, I suggest you go...it's in Chicago right now. The only downside was that the more famous actors weren't there as they were performing in the show that evening. Adam Garcia (the Australian guy in Coyote Ugly) and Miriam Margolyes (Prof. Sprout in the Harry Potter movies) are usually in it.

Sunday I began to not feel so well, so I basically took it easy and read all day. That night of course was the Super Bowl. It started at 11:30 pm here. The three Chicago girls definitely stayed up for the entire game. It was a disappointing loss, but there's always next year (or another 21 years).

This week has been pretty busy as I have a ton of work to take care of. Yesterday in Media we watched a film on Haagen Dazs ice cream. It became extremely popular in the UK because it was advertised as a luxury product for adults, as opposed to a treat for children in the summer like other ice cream. One of its strongest advantages was that it was American. During World War 2 ice cream was banned in the UK due to rationing. In order to continue making ice cream, as well as chocolate, British manufacturers were forced to use vegetable oil instead of dairy products. After the war the ban was lifted, yet these companies continued to use vegetable oil. To this very day, cream is not actually used in British ice cream (at least according to my prof.), which is why Haagen Dazs is incredibly popular. At one point these companies were actually taken to the European Courts because other companies wanted to make it illegal for them to call their products "ice cream" and "milk chocolate". The British companies (Walls and Cadbury to name a few) had such good lawyers, however, that they won their case.

Inspeaking of Cadbury, in England they don't just have Cadbury eggs during Easter...they're here all year round. They also have a MILLION other products. Well, maybe not that many, but a lot, and they're all amazing. One of these days I need to make a post dedicated to all of the junk food I eat here. I don't know what I'm going to eat when I get home.

I haven't been feeling all that well today. My right eye has been hurting a bit and my throat is really sore. Hopefully this will all go away soon as I have an 8 page essay due Thursday. I spent the morning at the library today and managed to churn out a 1200 word essay with an hour and a half to spare before class :)

Hopefully I can get all of my work done before March so that I can actually get out and do stuff as these blog entries will probably not be too exciting until then.

In speaking of work, I should begin researching ethnicity groups in London for my essay. Have a great Tuesday!

Another weekend has arrived...and I'm leaving again!

I just wanted to let you all know that my pics from Paris are up. I don't have my friends' pics up yet as I haven't received them, but mine are up. There are a few really good ones of me with the Eiffel Tower missing, but as soon as I steal them off of other peoples' cameras, I'll be sure to post them. I'll also post the video of the Eiffel Tower twinkling. You can find all of these pics here.

Today was pretty much a lazy day. I got up early, got some reading finished, and went to a designer sale. They had all sorts of designers (Prada, D&G, Versace, etc.) on sale for 60-80% off. I managed to score 2 adorable tops for very few pounds....although they aren't by anyone I've ever heard of. That's ok though, I like them. Tonight Megan, Maura, and I went to dinner at Pizza Express near our house. I had margharite pizza and banoffee pie...yum :) I like how all I ever talk about on here is food. I'm turning into Shom (I heart you!).

Tomorrow morning I leave bright and early for Wales. I am going with a tour company that is often used by our program. I'm a little nervous since I'm going alone, but one of my New Year's Resolutions was to be more outgoing and meet lots of people, so this is a good thing. Tomorrow we are visiting Chepstow Castle, Tintern Abbey, and some random village that has 33 bookstores and antique shops lol. Sunday is the day that we ride all day.

I will be back Sunday night around 9 or 10. This will give me a couple of hours to get back to the house and meet up with some people at a bar to watch the Bears win the Super Bowl :). Thank goodness I don't have class until 2 pm on Tuesday hehe.

Have a good weekend everyone!!!