Wow!!! I have been awful in keeping up with this! Sorry it has been over a week!

Let's see what have we missed... I will try to keep this all to a minimum...

3/5/12

Day started out as a usual Monday, it was class with Andrew which meant a little over an hour of lecture on Georgian London and about an hour of presentations before we took a break for lunch, after which we headed out on one of our weekly tours. This time we headed over to the Victoria and Albert Museum to check out some of the cool artwork in there and for some reason on this day I decided to forget my camera and so did not get any pictures whatsoever. We then headed to the Albert Memorial which is so beautiful but cost so much money but Queen Victoria just HAD to get it built because she was so broken up over his death. Turns out the memorial is really gaudy and against what Prince Albert stood for, but hey Vicky was pretty heartbroken and might not have been thinking too straight. I didn't have my camera this day but luckily I went a few weeks earlier and did get pictures! You might even remember it from a previous post!

Monday night was fun as well. We went to go see the play Traveling Light, another one that I recommend highly, it was really interesting! And after the play we all decided that we did not want to go back to our flat yet and so a group of us went out to the pub where I got a very nice sized drink.

Ain't it perty?

So it was a little late when we got back, but bar time is about 11 here, so it really wasn't so late.

3/6/12
No Class with Andrew today :( it is kind of sad that it is our second to last week before we are all done in London and a tour with Andrew did not happen but we still had a tour! Nadia Valman, who is actually a professor of religion and specializes in Judaism, took us all on a tour of the East Side of London. She taught us a lot about the history and showed us the palimpsest of the East Side but I have to say that it is not a place that I will find myself wanting to go to a whole lot in my future. It was kind of dirty. But I was excited to see this!

Yea man! I was on a street where Jack the Ripper killed two women! I realize its a little creepy to be excited about this but the Ripper has intrigued me since I was little.

3/7/12
Wednesday was not too eventful during the day. We had class with Natania in the morning and discussed the play we went to see on Monday and started discussing the book Mrs. Dalloway by Virgina Woolf. If any of you are fans of this book good for you, but it is not a book I plan on reading for fun again anytime soon!
This night was awesome since I got the chance to take a trip to my past because we went to go see Matilda, the musical! It was everything that is awesome about the story of Matilda that I have loved since my childhood with the added sweet awesometude of singing and dancing! The set was gorgeous!

 And the children were so talented!!!

This clip doesn't even do the actors justice! Seeing it live was just amazing and I would love to go see it again and again!

I would have loved to stay after the show and try to meet some of the actors but sadly I had to up in about 4 hours to leave for Ireland!!

3/8/12
It is going to be very difficult to leave my description of my trip to Ireland short because it is just the most amazing and beautiful and magical place in the entire world! And I am going back, no doubt about that one there!

But like I said, we had to wake up very early in order to catch our flight there. 7 of us went but 3 of us got plane tickets for 6 in the morning and so had to be awake by about 330. It was totally worth it though! Despite being exhausted and wanting to sleep we stayed awake our first day in Ireland, and although all that we did was explore Dublin on our own it was fantastic! We stayed in a little hostel called Jacobs Inn, it was simple but good.

 And then we just took a stroll around the town and enjoyed, well everything.

We got some awesome pictures but of course pictures don't always portray the awesomeness of what we see!

[Video will not upload right now but I will come back to this later!]

 It wasn't terribly eventful but so nice, and when we got back we got a little something to eat, made our dinners in the kitchen, Lizzi was hit on by an older man but didn't realize it, we met another person that was staying in the hostel and we all went out to the pub for a drink!

Ok maybe more than just a drink. haha, don't worry there were 7 of us, those are not all mine!

 When we were done at the pub Jenna Hannah and I had been up for about 21 hours, so we were pretty ready for bed and passed out faster than we could lay down in our beds.

 3/9/12
 Jenna Hannah and I were all very happy to be able to sleep later than 4 in the morning and while we didn't sleep in too late we did get to stay in bed until about 9, but then we had to get up because it is just stupid to waste time in Ireland by sleeping! We stayed in Dublin again this day but this time we were able to learn a whole lot about the city during a walking tour with one of the most energetic Irish women I have ever met! She was crazy awesome and the tour was fantastic. It was free but we all had to give her money at the end because it was great. We learned a lot about the different people who have lived in Ireland and about the different forms of government that has controlled the country but it was so great because the tour guide (Amanda) basically told us all of this information in story book form. We also toured different parts of the city to learn about famous writers and places in the city, and even ran into a very drunk women who taught us all the importance of dancing. You had to be there to appreciate it but it was hilarious!

Dublin Castle

Dublin Castle

Garden by Dublin Castle

Haunted 40 Steps

A church... don't remember which...

Statue of James Joyce with his best friend (where the drunk lady told us to dance)

St. Stephens Park

This tour was awesome I had so much fun and learned a whole lot about Dublin and Ireland in general. While it was fantastic I would not call it the highlight of my day since right after I went to the most amazing place in the world, better than Disney World, that's right I said it, better than Disney!

I WENT TO THE GUINNESS BREWERY!!!!! It was fantastic! I went by myself because nobody else on this trip appreciates a good beer quite as much as I do. I also learned a lot on this tour that I took as well. It was all about how to make beer and what makes a Guinness so amazing, but I feel it was information that is very much worth knowing!

The 9000 year lease on the land for the brewery

The safe that holds the yeast used for Guinness

There is a waterfall in the brewery! It is like the Willy Wonka's factory of all breweries!!

"makes it light and frothy..." haha I'm sure that doesn't apply to this situation

My free taste

My teacher of how to pour the perfect pint

Before

After

I got a certificate for pouring the perfect pint!

And I got to drink the pint!

Overall I would put this day in one of the top five best days of my life. It was grand and even though I got sick later that night and could not go out to any of the pubs I still consider this day pretty awesome! And we all made a new friend! We met her at our hostel she was staying in the same room as us. Her name is Anna and she is from Brazil who came to Ireland to go to school so she could better learn English. She is already doing an amazing job and it was so great to meet her, she was the cutest and nicest person!

3/10/12
Another very active day in Ireland, woke up a little earlier than the day before because we had a bus tour to Wicklow out in the country. This means we got to see real Ireland, the green pretty parts of Ireland! Again we had an awesome guide, a man this time named Stephen who did not like to follow the rules of the road! According to him most of the stop lights in Ireland are simply decoration. I disagree but didn't feel that it was appropriate to argue with the driver. A lot of what we did was stop for pictures of the pretty landscape at different areas but while we were driving Stephen also gave us some history of Ireland and the areas surrounding us. My favorite parts were in the bog lands where we learned about the bog bodies (I will not go into detail if people are squeamish but if you want to know more check it out! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body) and we learned a lovely song about the bog and we all got to sing together! In this area quite a few movies were filmed as well, including Braveheart and P.S. I Love You!!!!  We stopped in a little town for lunch and then made our way to a really old monastery attributed to St. Kevin of Glendalough. There were also two really pretty lakes here and a whole bunch of sheep! Many pictures were taken on this trip!

Legend says if a woman runs around this tower 3 times counterclockwise she will get married within a year, clockwise and she will get divorced

Left from the old monastery

Me by the chapel of St. Kevin

The Lower Lake

That's a mini waterfall behind me

The Upper Lake

I also took a more serious picture of them but I feel this captures the mood of the day

Pretty Tree by the Upper Lake

That's Sheila, she got sleepy while she was eating

Chapel of St. Kevin

Graves by the monastery

Pretty Irish landscape

A river that leads to a waterfall

There are sheep in that field but they look really tiny here

Wild Windelow Bus Tour

Gorgeous trees

Kelsey by the water of the sandy beaches

Ain't she so pretty!

Taken from inside the bus, you can kind of see my reflection.

The tour was so great, and it was amazing to see the beautiful Irish country! When we got back to the hostel after the tour was over we were all really tired and planned to just eat and relax for a little while and go to bed. We kind of did that, except we stayed awake for a few hours longer than we wanted to because we met some really cool who were also staying in the hostel and go to school in Ireland! One of these people, her name is Katie, decided that I am her new best friend and she lives in Chicago and so told me that she is going to come to Wisconsin searching for me. We all hung out for quite awhile and an interesting game of pool/snookered was played before we finally decided it would be a good idea to catch some shut eye before we woke up at 3:30 again to catch a flight home (to London).


3/11/12
It was really sad to leave Ireland, I would have stayed forever if I could but at least I was going back to London, another city I have come to love. I was really tired when we got back and planned to take a nap but somehow never got along to it. I did, however, start planning my trip home after we are all done in Italy, which of course is going to have a pit stop in Ireland before going back to the States. I also got a bit of research in for the the two final papers that I have due Friday. I actually was very productive which is strange for Sunday because I also finished an application to do research at the University of Santa Barbara for this summer! Send positive vibes my way that I get accepted! I would love to go back to that University, it is just perfect for me!

3/12/12
Back to classes. Morning started with class with Andrew. We are in our last week in London :( and so we had a lecture on modern and post modern architecture followed by presentations of 20th and 21st century buildings. Same as usual, break for lunch and then off to a tour. This time we went to the Tate Britain to see an art exhibit called migrations about (obviously) migration in Britain. There was truly some amazing and moving pieces, but as usual with art galleries I could not take any pictures of any of it.

Which is why I got yelled at when I took this :)

I would recommend looking into it though if it sounds interesting to you, it is very much worth it. After everyone had made it through the exhibit Hannah Jenna and I wandered around more of the museum and saw some pretty cool stuff and some kind of odd things. One piece even made me really dizzy, it was an inverted reverse mirror that made me feel like I was on a rocking ship when I looked at it.
The rest of the day wasn't very eventful after the museum. We all headed back to the flat where we ate a delicious stir fry made by Lizzi and Charlotte and we all attempted to do more work on our final papers.

3/13/12
Today was kind of a slow day. I was a little sad all day because it finally hit me that I am going to be leaving London in just a matter of days and I don't want to! Still, I had to knock myself out of it because there is still work to do! I did sleep in today just a little bit because I kind of forgot to set my alarm clock... haha. Oops. But then I had what I feel is a very productive day. Jenna Hanna and I started out by going out to get a box that we can all send stuff home in, since we are all really worried about bringing so much with us to Italy. After we got the boxes we made our way to Trafalgar Square (probably for the last time) and then off to Camden Town because Jenna and I really wanted Chinese food for lunch! And Hannah ate some too! I was so proud!

Noodles, Bang Bang Chicken, shrimp and Spring Rolls

We then had to leave for Canary Wharf for our last tour with Andrew :( the tour did not go very long because there was not a whole lot to see that we could not see in any major city in the world.

But we did have a very long and nice talk about the movie the Matrix and various other movies that question the true reality. We then had a very sentimental goodbye to Andrew and made him promise to come to the farewell dinner on Friday.
The night has been kind of slow since then. More research and more work on our final papers, and somehow I found a way to catch up on my blog! Yay me!

I am sorry this post ended up so long. It is very easy to lose track of the days here.