Waffles and Truffles!

I would like to take this opportunity to announce that I am moving to Belgium.

Seriously.

OMG, there were chocolate shops lining the streets, waffles trucks in the streets, and french fries everwhere. The shops had Christmas displayed in the windows. It SNOWED yesterday. My friend Brian and I spent the entire weekend window shopping, eating waffles, and drooling over chocolate.

In Belgium, they eat fries with mayonnaise. Not my favorite, but they were still delish!

On our first night in Brussels, we stumbled onto a gem: a real-life marionette show...in French!! I am pretty sure that we were the only two non-French speakers in the whole place. It was located in an old theatre that has been owned and operated by the same family since the 1800's. The room resembled an attic, and there were puppets hanging from the rafters. It was so incredibly entertaining! I will have to show you all the videos I took when I get home.

This is Bruges, all lit up at night. So pretty!

Mmmmmm. Chocolate covered waffles.

One of the many chocolate shops. We spent HOURS just wandering in, looking at the displays, and debating which shop to buy from. Some of them had the BEST window displays!

On Sunday, it snowed!! How cool that my first snow of the year was experienced in Brussels. This is taken at the Atomium, which was built for the 1958 World Fair.

Oh, the waffles. How I miss them. They were indescribably delicious.

We Will Rock You!

Last night we went to see "We Will Rock You" on the West End in London. The show is a tribute to Queen. (you know, the band?) It was my first big musical, and I loved it! I mean, the plot was ridiculous, but the music was incredible!

Tomorrow I am leaving for Brussels and Bruges (located in Belgium). Belgium is known for three things: Chocolate, Waffles, and Fries. It's like they knew I would come one day. WAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Bulgaria!

So, this weekend I went to Bulgaria. It borders Romania, Turkey, and Greece...pretty much as far east as you can go in Europe without hitting Russia! (See it in the lower right corner of the map? It's teal...but not in real life.)

Bulgaria is very mountainous. We spent lots of time in a bus on windy roads, driving through the Balkan mountains. This is me on top of the "Wonder Bridges".

When we weren't driving, we were eating. Bulgaria has some delicious cuisine-lots of feta cheese and tomatoes and meat. We also took loads of silly pictures. You know when you call out a scenario right before you take the picture, and the people in the picture have to respond at the last second? Yup, we liked that game. The caption to this one is (if I remember correctly) something about someone stealing your dinner before you even had a bite. I will spare you the other 35 pictures from this photo shoot...



We explored a few caves. This one is called "Devil's Throat", because apparently whatever goes in does NOT come out.


But don't worry Mom, we made it! It was completely safe!

This is Maria. She was born and raised in Bulgaria. She now lives in London and works as our International Coordinator, which means she plans our trips and keeps us safe and helps us learn how to live in another country. We spent the weekend visiting her home country, hanging out with her family, and learning about Bulgaria's history. She is hip and smart and walks 80 miles an hour. Some of the boys in our group refer to her as the "Bulgarian Bullet"!!

This is Maria's dad and a man I don't know playing the accordian and the Bulgarian bagpipe for us at dinner. SO COOL!

We tried Turkish Delight for the first time at a small market. I thought it tasted like rubber. Bleh. What was Edward thinking in The Chronicles of Narnia?? But at least it made for a cute picture, right?

We hiked up 1000 steps to the Shipka Tower.

(Actually, Zach and I counted-there were 1,066 steps, for the record.)

Did I already mention the food?? So GOOD!


Team Reading, getting their cheese on. In Bulgaria, you say "Zele!" before taking a photo.

This was yet another monument in the mountains. The surrounding area reminded me of Jurassic Park. I kept waiting for a Velossa Raptor to appear out of the fog and attack us...luckily, we avoided all such creatures.

There is so much more to say, but I will end there for now. If anyone is planning their next vacation, don't write Bulgaria out so quickly...it is a marvelous place!!

Hi loves!

So I have spent the past two days in the library, meeting with professors, and trying to get started on the massive end-of-the-quarter projects that are looming...as well as recovering from Italy and preparing to leave for Bulgaria! (I am leaving this afternoon.) November is going to be a full, crazy month for me-I will be in a different country every weekend! AHHH!

Yesterday I rearranged my room, and it just feels so great. Isn't rearranging fun? It makes me feel settled and cozy when I switch things up.

Anyhoo, I don't have much time...just wanted to say hi and bye. See you on Monday!

Italia!

Ciao! Wow-I feel as though I was in Italy for a month! How do I tell you about my adventures in Italy in one succint post?! How do I choose 5 pictures out of 300? I'll do my best...

We started the trip with an insane amount of traveling. Seriously, it took us 13 hours to get from our rooms in Reading to our hostel in Rome. Here was our path: We walked to the station in Reading, took a taxi to London, rode the Tube to Liverpool Station, Bought tickets for and boarded the Stansted Airport Express Train, checked in at the airport (which included me being completely patted down and my bag dumped out and searched...) waited for an hour, flew to Italy, found our way to the bus stop, waited 45 minutes for the bus, rode the bus for 1.5 hours, wandered around Rome searching for our hostel, and FINALLY checked in! Wow. Needless to say, we were ravenous, tired, and cranky when we arrive. However, a delicious pizza and some gelato later, and we were back in action!

On Saturday morning, we set off bright and early for the Colosseum. SO COOL! We just stood there staring up at it, saying, "We can't believe what we are looking at right now!"

After a quick lunch stop for some phenomenal panini's, we could finally eat what we came for...

The gelato! Honestly, we half-heartedly chose our lunch and dinner locations based on price and convenience, but choosing the right gelateria was an entirely different story. There were criteria: We had to be drawn in by the window disply; we had to get a good "vibe" from the gelateria, owner, and overall atmosphere; we had to see a flavor that we couldn't live without; etc. It was sort of silly but entirely necessary.

Oh, so good! We seriously ate gelato after every meal, and I tried two new flavors each time. My favorites were Bacio (chocolate with some sort of nut?) and mint. Ooooh, and this green one that I can't remember the name of. And the mango one. AHHH!!

On Saturday night we took a train into Florence, and on Sunday we explored. What a beautiful city! (Erica, I thought of you at least 6 trillion times on this day!!) We saw the Duomo, the cathedral, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Medici Chapels, and some beautiful churches. We hiked up to the Piazzale Michelangelo for this great view, and it was so worth it!

Then we walked across the Ponte Veccio...so beautiful!

Does this make me a creeper? I couldn't help it-they were such a cute little Italian couple!

Quick gelato fix...

Along the Arno River!

Our last stop was Pisa. There is nothing in Pisa besides this tower...and great gelato, of course. :)

We had decided to stay the night in the Pisa airport, since our flight left early on Monday morning. We trekked over and settled down in the uncomfortable chairs, and just as I was drifting off the sleep, a worker from the airport came over and delivered some devatstating news: the airport was closing until 4am!! Since when do airports close?! What on earth could we do for 3.5 hours in the middle of the night in Pisa?? We headed outside and put on all of our clothing and huddled together on a bench, feeling sorry for ourselves.

BUT THEN I looked up to see a gleaming beacon of hope in the distance: A parking garage! (cue music.) Jessie, Jamie, and I headed over to scope out the place. It was circular, and we started doing laps. Pretty soon we had timed a lap (3 minutes), counted the number of steps one lap took (450), and calculated roughly how many laps were in a mile (12). We then proceeded to walk 3 miles around the garage, talking, fantasizing about food, and playing silly games like, "I went to Italy and I bought..." (You know the one? Where one person says, "an apple!" and the next person says, "an apple and some blueberries!" and you keep going until you make it through the alphabet? I could still recite all 26 items that we came up with if you are interested...) It sounds ridiculous, but the laps and the games kept us warm, occupied, and helped the time to pass rather quickly. It reminded me of Relay for Life, and I regaled the girls with epic stories from my previous all-night walk-a-thons around Wallace Field. They were impressed.

So, at 4am we went back into the airport, and after about 6 more hours of traveling, we finally made it back to Reading. Of course, it POURED the entire walk home-one last attempt by the forces of the earth to disrupt our traveling. Nice try Mother Nature...it was still an incredible trip!! Now, I must sleep. :)

Brighton, Bath, Stonehenge

Last weekend we went to Brighton, Stonehenge, and Bath.

Brighton is a town by the sea with a very cute pier. It reminded me of Santa Monica.

It was VERY rainy on our trip to Brighton. We were completely soaked-jeans, socks, everything. However, there comes a point when you are SO wet that you stop caring, and that is when things get fun. Our umbrellas were being blown inside out and broken by the wind. We had a great time teasing one member of the group who insisted that his American umbrella was of better quality than our cheap, $2 umbrellas from here. As you can probably guess, his umbrella definitely snapped in half by the end of the day. It was hiLARious, let me tell you!

The next day we went to Stonehenge. No rain this time, but EXTRA wind. These are five of the six Americans in my program who are studying at Reading. We have fun together. Lauren was kindly holding my bangs (aka "fringe") down for me, because they were blowing in my face. Thanks Lauren!

Finally, we visited Bath. This is me in front of the Roman Baths, which were built in AD 43. Crazy huh??

Last night I watched election coverage until 2:30am with friends from America, England, Malaysia, and Switzerland. I think I will always remember it! This morning I woke up to cheering as my floormates discovered that Obama had won. One of them offered me champagne when I stumbled out of my room to visit the bathroom. I politely declined. I think it is safe to say that our foreign relations are looking a tad brighter with Obama as our future leader...it seems as if the rest of the world is obsessed! Hopefully he can follow through on all of this change he talks about...

Today we celebrated Guy Fawke's day here in England-"Remember remember the fifth of November." If you don't know what I am talking about, go watch V for Vendetta. We went to a fireworks party at someone's house, and it was pretty fun. But, I would like to mention that the fireworks that they were shooting off would DEFINITELY be illegal in the US.

Also, they tried to make s'mores, and it was not too successful; instead of roasting marshmallows on a stick, they put the marshmallow between a cookie/biscuit thing, wrap it in foil, and set it on the fire. So, the cookie burned and the marshmallow was lukewarm. Not the best tactic.

I guess that's it for now...

On Friday morning I am leaving for Italy for the weekend. Ahhhhh!!!

While you were sleeping...

...we were waiting. England has been waiting ALL day for America to wake up and choose its new president. Every conversation that I have had today has revolved around the elections. I just got back from London, and there were newspapers and signs everywhere that mentioned the election. The London Paper, always available as reading material on the Tube, was all about McCain and Obama. Tonight, I know of at least 10 different pubs that are staying open all night with election coverage. One of the clubs had a cover charge of 35 pounds-about $70!! The entire world seems to be focused on America tonight. I am actually going to watch the coverage right now, even though it's almost midnight here and the polls are not even closed. It's so neat to be over here and to dialogue about this affair with people from all over the world. Hurry up and vote, everyone, so that we can know who wins and then I can go to bed!! :)