Saying Goodbye to Europe...for now :-)

On Tuesday I went shopping again with Marielle’s mom and we went to Breda again trying to look for some local market type booths. But I guess we got there too late and the markets were already packing their things up. So we decided to just wander around and we had tea and coffee in a coffee shop. Marielle’s mom also got some Finwick hot tea glasses for Marielle because she had a coupon for them.

We wandered around the little town and were also supposed to see this old church but it was also closed due to reconstruction. We went instead to an old nunnery home and looked around their little abbey. It was cute and there was also reconstruction being done to their brick roads so that was kind of interesting to see them redoing old brick roads haha.

I got some post cards from a little tourist shop and we decided to go to this other mall and we had lunch in a side shop. I had the crouquet’s again, and it was very good :D We looked in some other stores, but I really didn’t need anything else really, and could hardly fit anything back into my suitcase…so I just bought a Duffy cd for Sam as a present. Duffy is an up and coming pop artist from England and I love her music!!

After we were done at the mall, we stopped in this other little town and had ice cream. We were sitting by some really cool trees that were called Babies Fingers and they looked like something out of A Nightmare Before Christmas they were very bizarre!

Later that evening, I had invited Marielle’s mom, her boyfriend, Erwin’s parents and Annette and her boyfriend all out to eat dinner at the place that I won the gift certificates to. It was a lot of fun! Our table was given two hot hot hot stones to cook a variety of meats and vegetables. There were these sauces you could put on your meats too and I liked those a lot. We had salad and ate a fun and good meal! For desert, I got to try the very Dutch cream puff that had this layer of hard chocolate on top. Erwin bet Annett’s boyfriend that I couldn’t eat it all…which I sadly couldn’t haha! I had had too much to eat, but it was good though haha. Marielle and I had fun taking goofy pictures and it was a great way to end my visit with my host Dutch sister! :D

That night I had to sadly re-pack all of my stuff, souvenirs, laptop all into my book bag and suitcase. It was a tight squeeze but I managed it. I said goodnight to Erwin and Marielle and didn’t really think about the next day because I didn’t want to leave!!
Sadly, my last day of being in Europe came to an end. On Wednesday April 9th, I got all of my stuff into Marielle’s car and we headed out to the airport. It was a sad goodbye, with tears and lots of hugs.

I had time to kill before getting onto the plane and wrote in my journal and listened to music. When I boarded the plane I sat next to this woman, but then she ended up moving up a seat because we had a lot of available chairs. So I decided to watch a movie. Which was about the worst thing really because it ended up being The Holiday with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet. And it was about England….so I sadly cried throughout the movie and missed my friends and my life in England soooo much!!!!

Once I was in Newark for my flight change, I bought some magazines and it felt so weird to be back in the States. I didn’t have all of those different accents around me, the people working at the news stand and the coffee shop spoke English without the British accent. It took a while to figure out if my flight was on time still since it didn’t say anything about it being delayed or not. I just went to the gate, sat next to a group of people at the gate I was supposed to be in and then finally found out that I was at the right one and that my flight was on time.

I just read my magazine and then we boarded the plane. I ended up sleeping the whole way from Newark to Chicago and by the time I woke up, my plane was landing. I was excited to see my parents though. I came down the escalator after going to the baggage claim area and they were there at the bottom of the stairs! I gave them hugs and kisses and they laughed and asked where my British accent was. Haha I told them I wasn’t there long enough and wished that I had had a year instead. But I was happy to see them and once we got my luggage, we headed to the car and I kept mom awake driving back home with all of my stories that I had to tell.

When we finally got home at about one in the morning, I opened the door and saw my sisters, brother, cats and dogs all waiting up for me!! I gave everyone hugs and got my suitcases inside the house. I brought the suitcase with all of the souvenirs and presents in it with me, and sent another one ahead before I left England. It ended up in the Chicago airport suitcase holding center or some place like that haha.

I gave everyone their gifts and then we all went to bed. I still couldn’t believe that I was back home and in my old room…it felt so strange to be back. Like I was back home, a suitcase still in my room, and then I would be off and starting the whole adventure over again!

I’m so glad to have had the opportunity to study abroad. I've accomplished one of my life goals! I made a lot of friends, had a great host family, got to travel and live in England!! I’ve now been bitten by the travel bug and miss England so much my family is already sick of me talking about it all the time! But this experience has changed my life and made me realize how much I enjoyed living in England.

I hope you all have enjoyed reading about my travels. I am sorry it took so long to finish this blog! I’m glad that I did start it because now I can look back on this and remember all of the fun I had, the people I met, and the amazing places I saw! Thanks for sharing your comments! Much love!

XX,
Shannon
P.S. Pictures will soon follow this too :D

IKEA, shopping & driving a stick shift! Watch out Holland ;)

Sunday was the day when Marielle and Erwin’s neighborhood was having their scavenger hunt/lottery to rename the name of the street in which all of them live.
We woke up, showered and headed out to the pub where everyone was waiting for their assignments and directions.

Marielle and I were assigned with another woman, and our job was to wait around the children’s school where Marielle grew up and went to school. Each group or person got two letters for the scramble that at the end of the hunt, the neighbors were supposed to put together and figure out the new name of the street.

We dressed in pigtails and also put freckles on our cheeks to make us look younger. We had chalk, jump rope, bat gamin, and bubbles to play with, along with very good Dutch gummy bears that we gave out to the kids who came by.
I drew on the sidewalk, ‘Shannon loves Holland’ hehe and Marielle and I played bat gamin, and blew bubbles around the kids when they came by.

Once everyone was finished, the groups got back together and went into the pub together. There were lots of people sitting at round tables already, so Erwin, Marielle and I decided to stand around one of the tall bar tables with some other older folks.

I was basically the only person in the whole room that didn’t speak fluent Dutch, so I felt out of place for a while haha. It was all right though, Marielle and Erwin would help translate for me, or if someone would talk to me, they would translate what that person was saying as well.
We got many rounds of beer, I had to change to diet coke after a while, partly because I didn’t like the beer hehe. Erwin can put back a lot is all I have to say haha!

Once we had had many drinks, mini foods like sausage rolls with bacon, chicken wings with dipping sauces, cheeses, crackers, cake, etc. then the lottery started.
Each person bought a number of tickets with numbers on them. Marielle let me be in charge of her tickets as well as mine, since she had to help pass out presents and help draw numbers. So Erwin helped me with the numbers since the lady named Annet would call them all out in Dutch haha.
And I ended up winning lots of stuff!! I usually never win anything, especially when it comes to anything like BINGO or lottery games, even in school haha. So I have to admit that the numbers that I were winning were mainly from Marielle’s tickets but, she gave them to me so technically they were mine hehe :D

There was also this elderly gentleman who kept trying to talk to me, and when the chicken wings would come back towards our table, he would say “McDonalds” all the time, even though the chicken wings looked nothing like McDonalds chicken nuggets haha, I just smiled and nodded. So anyways, this man decided to give me this huge flower pot that had a very pretty orchid in it, and said that I was supposed to give it to my mom. Then he won another one and gave me the other one to keep too! I started to laugh because of course I couldn’t take back these plants with me, so I just left them at Marielle’s house. Other things I ended up winning were 2 plants, a hand towel set, a giant plastic pen, a bag, a t-shirt that talks about safety in Dutch, a huge Beer Mug hat that was orange, a book on the Dutch NASCAR men, but was mainly of half naked NASCAR race women (which I ended up giving to my brother as a present haha), some thank you cards (in Dutch) and a gift voucher (gift card hehe) to a restaurant around Made. So, I cleaned up well I thought!

Later that night we went out to the local Made pub for drinks. We met Marielle’s friend Annet and her boyfriend. We stayed there for a while, talking with her friends, and this crazy old man who kept saying Kicker, which I think means frog in Dutch..? He was funny, and was telling people how he was going to dress up as Celine Dion and wear a wig, at this local party that Made was having soon in May, where this crazy guy was going to be the DJ for the party. Marielle and Annet were telling me that they were going to try to convince him to not dress up because it would be too gross of a sight haha!

After the pub, we walked back to Marielle’s house, hung out there, listened to music, and some of Marielle’s friends came by because they saw us in the window of her house. We started a dance party and by the time they left, we were all soo tired.

On Monday, Marielle and Erwin both had to go back to work, so I got to go shopping with Marielle and Erwin’s mothers. We went to IKEA in a town between Made and Amsterdam. I decided to play this pencil game that my British friend James told me about that he and his sisters play when they’re at an IKEA. You’re supposed to go around the store and collect the most pencils, and whoever has the most pencils by the time you exit the store wins.

The pencils are like golfing pencils and fit very nicely into my purse haha. So I just went along IKEA, do do do do do, stuffing pencils in my purse. Both Marielle and Erwin’s mom’s helped me too haha! I’ve never been to an IKEA before and thought it was pretty cool. I liked the kitchens, and had them take a couple of pictures of me in my favorite ones haha. There were tons of stuff in this store, it was cool! I just wanted to have a house so that I could decorate and design it. I ended up buying some coasters for me and my friends, so that we all would have matching coasters (different colors) and they would be from Holland haha :D
We got a snack in the cafeteria on the third floor and I got a hot tea and a kind of fruit pie, which was very yummy haha. After lunch we finished in IKEA and we went shopping. Oh once I was in the car I counted all of my pencils, and I had a total of….121 pencils!!! I still don’t know what I’m going to do with them all haha!

We ate lunch at Subway haha felt like home, and then looked around the shops. I ended up getting some skinny black jeans, some bracelets, and a top from H&M.

When we were done shopping for the day, Marielle’s mom took Erwin’s mom back to her house, and Marielle’s mom and I went to her farm where she lives and where Marielle grew up. She has a barn with a tall brown horse, lots of black and brown sheep, some chickens, and a black cat. Her house is very cute too! It’s very home farm style, kind of ranch style as well. She let me use her internet while she started to make dinner for Marielle, Erwin and me.

When Marielle and Erwin got off of work, they came to pick me up. I got to drive Erwin's car (stick shift) over to the farm!! It was interesting. I was a little nervous when I actually was on the road It took me a while to get out of the driveway in the beginning haha. I kept having to restart it since I wouldn't switch my feet fast enough to change the pedals! So frustrating, but I finally got the hang on it ;) I still much rather would drive an automatic any day :D

We went over to Marielle’s brother’s farm for a while in between dinner. He showed us where there were new born baby lambs, I got to hold one who was on a block of hay and sectioned off from the others. I named him Babe, because his mom didn’t want him and shoved him out of the way when it came time to feed, so he had to be in his own sectioned cage. He was soo cute, and his little bleat was soo funny and sad too.

Next I got to see where the dairy cows got ready to be milked by the machines. He has 109 dairy cows that need to be milked twice a day!!! There are huge tanks that the milk goes into. The machines that get put around the cows, is in tune with these necklaces that the cows will wear and the machines tell the milk machines how much milk the cow can have taken out of them. Pretty cool I thought. We walked along the stables, and I came close to getting head butted by the bull cow!! He had the biggest head, he looked like he could eat me.... if cows ate meat that is hehe.

Then we washed our hands, said goodbye to Marielle's brother and his girlfriend, and went back to Marielle's mom's home to eat dinner.
We were served homemade sausages with potatoes and spinach. Pretty good too! Then after dinner Marielle, Annet and I went to their local pool to go to their workout class. It was very low key stuff, but since I hadn't been swimming in a while, it gave me a good workout.

Annet said that if they knew ahead of time that I was that good of a swimmer, they probably wouldn't have invited me ;D Oops, but it was fun ;) I missed being back in the pool. We just did some laps, swam different strokes. I had to demonstrate how to swim butterfly, which was towards the end of the practice, not smart really haha I was very tired by the time that came along. We practiced diving, swimming underwater width-wise, and other strokes.

After swimming, we stopped by McDonalds, haha and enjoyed some french fries. Then Annet dropped us off and we watched My Best Friend's Wedding and crashed on the couch.

Belgian Chocolates, crepes, & a naked boy statue = Only in Brussels!!

Saturday was a day trip to go to Brussels, Belgium. It basically felt like it was a trip to go to Chicago or St. Louis, we were just in another country is all! That was pretty weird and cool too. We all had to take our passports with us, but were never asked to show them. It was just for emergencies I suppose.

Once we were in Brussels, we were driving down one of the main streets and up ahead of us was a mini Arc de Triumph. I felt like I was back in Paris haha. We found a parking spot for the car and then started out wandering around Brussels. We didn’t really have an agenda, except to get to go see the Mannekin-Pis statue, of the little boy peeing into a fountain. It’s apparently Brussels most famous sculpture haha. We started out in a kind of huge court area, with a church that looked very gothic, along with shops, chocolate shops all over of course.

We headed to the far right corner of the court and walked down a couple of side streets and came up to this crowd congregating. I looked over and there was the little Mannekin-Pis statue. There was a sound system being played and they were playing “The White Cliffs of Dover” !!! How weird was that haha. I miss those cliffs hehe. The joke between Jen, Erin, Patrick and I was that we had seen those cliffs so many times from our Paris trip, and being in Dover for a field trip that we were kind of sick of them. We would say “Cliffs of Mour, who needs that when we have the amazing Cliffs of Dover” being very sarcastic about the whole thing and it was funny for me then to hear the “White Cliffs of Dover” being played in Belgium!

Once I had taken a couple of pictures there we headed back to the court and ate at a restaurant that was kind of like an old fashioned tavern. It was pretty cool, but the waiter was not very nice. Once we were done with lunch we headed over to another market place to look for a present for my sister Sam. I still didn’t really know what to get her, so when I saw a cute purple scarf I thought that she would like it. Plus scarves are very European haha!

I took another picture with this other statue that is famous, but not sure why because Marielle’s book on Belgium was all in Dutch, so I had just seen the picture in the car.

After the market, we wandered over to a very pretty church that reminded me of the Notre Dame Cathedral. We went inside and stayed for a little bit of the service, listened to another beautiful choir sing, and then sat outside in this little park area in front with some lounge chairs.
After that we wandered around some more. There were tons of tour buses all over with a lot of people with their cameras and groups on tours. We then kept on walking and found the royal palace. It was pretty grand and was fun to see. There was also a huge park across the street and we went there to walk around as well. There was a kind of young adult circus going on and we stopped to watch some jugglers performing a short show. They were pretty good too.

The buildings in Belgium were mixed with modern ones as well as historical ones, which made it very strange to look out at all the different types of buildings. We then found this huge inside shopping mall type place. There were tons of chocolate shops, all expensive, puppet shops, perfume stores and designer clothing. People were sitting at tables outside of the stores, and the whole place was inside. I saw some people having little bowls of chocolate mousse and wanted to get one very badly haha I can’t resist chocolate mousse, especially if it’s from Belgium. So we went into the French store and I asked about how much was one of the chocolate mousse cups to take away. But the men inside said that it was on the house and gave me one for free!! Sweet! It was also very good too!

Once we were done looking at the shops we turned down a side alley of the mall strip and there were tons of food restaurants all displaying the different types of meat that they served, with managers and servers standing outside trying to coax in customers. We decided to find a less crowded area to eat and ended up looking for a souvenir shop for me to buy postcards.

Once we were done souvenir shopping we were ready to get something to eat and head on over to another part of Brussels to see a famous structure. We were passing by the chocolate shops and I had to buy some before I left. I got to pick out a number of different kinds of chocolates, like 30 pieces for 8 euros! Good deal! We then found a restaurant to get something to eat. It had 3 levels to it and was pretty cool because it was so big. I got a hot chocolate and a giant chocolate crepe to eat :D Hehe it was very good!

When we were done eating we headed back to the car and over to this place where it had this gigantic statue that looked like a giant atom. You could go up in it, but we got there too late to do that. So we just took pictures under it and then got back in the car and left.
When we got back to Made and Marielle and Erwin were still hungry so they got these meat sandwiches with French fries. We went back to their house and watched The Last King of Scotland, well I watched it and they both fell asleep haha. Marielle was never very good at staying awake when we would watch movies :D
Then we all went to bed.
All in all a great visit to see Brussels and now I have eaten REAL Belgian chocolates too!! :D Life is good ;D

First couple of days in Amsterdam!!

Once my plane landed in Amsterdam’s airport, I went to the luggage area and called Marielle’s cell phone to tell her that I was in the airport. Marielle is our Dutch student that we hosted when we were in 8th grade. She went to ICC for a semester from January to May.
She told me that she was waiting outside of gate 1 where I came in. I rounded the corner and down the hall was Marielle and her friend Annet! We both had huge smiles on our faces and gave one another a BIG hug!! I’ve missed my big sister!

We sat at a little café place to talk and have a drink. I got some iced tea haha and told her how my flight went and how Paris had been. She said that her English was not as good as it used to be, but I told her that it was fine and it will get better by the end of the week when I left haha.
We headed out to the parking lot and got into Marielle’s car. Annet sat in the back and we headed out of the major part of the city of Amsterdam’s airport area and went to a part of town about an hour or so from the airport to eat some dinner.

We found a parking spot and Marielle was telling about what her boyfriend Erwin did for a job. She said that he sells compressed air to companies, like elevator companies, ummm.. And other companies that need compressed air haha, like hospitals?? Erwin also sells used bikes out of Marielle’s mom’s barn to people online. When Marielle was telling me this though, I thought that she meant that Erwin would steal the bikes from off of the streets, because she had pointed to a bike and said, “A bike like this.” and so I thought that he was stealing bikes from off of the street and selling them illegally from Marielle’s mom’s home! I was thinking, “Marielle! How is that legal? How can he get away with it?” She says, “Oh yeah, people do it all the time here.” Haha I was soo confused, so I said, “He steals the bikes, like takes them off of the streets!!” And then she understood what I was thinking and we started to laugh because that wasn’t it at all! Erwin’s cousin has a bike store where he sells new bikes. People bring in their old bikes to trade, and Erwin sells the used bikes to older people or students who can not afford a new bike. Hehe so lost in translation moment there!

We found this restaurant called King Arthur’s that was tucked away along a canal in this smaller town. Marielle used to live there and a club near King Arthur’s was where she would go out a lot when she was younger.

We had to wait at the bar for our table and I was not sure what kind of drink to get, since I usually would just get a Strongbow when I was in England. But I then spotted it and gasped! I got a bottle of Strongbow and Annet did too. Marielle got a glass of wine. But she tried my Strongbow and said it was all right.

We ordered our food and talked some more about what I had done in England, the places I went, the friends I made. Annet I found out is a secretary at a doctor’s office. Then I later found out that most of Marielle’s girlfriends were secretaries in one office or another. Must be a popular job huh haha!

After dinner we made our way back to the car and then back to Marielle’s home town called Made. Annet told me the joke that things are made in Made, hehe! We stopped to get McFlurries for dessert :D It was good, I hadn’t had McDonalds in a looong time!
After dessert we dropped Annet off at her house and then went to Marielle’s home a couple of minutes away from Annett’s home. Her house has 2 levels and is quite big, with a medium sized back yard with a tool shed. Erwin was in the living room watching television, a football game actually.

He is a very nice guy and funny too. His English is not as good as Marielle’s but with hand gestures and fishing around for words, as well as some help from Marielle, we understood one another :D

Marielle gave me a tour of the house and it was decorated by both of them. It is very cute and the rooms are actually quite big. Pictures are coming soon to an aol album near you :D
On Thursday the 8th of April, Marielle let me sleep in a little bit and we all got ready for a night in the city of Amsterdam! We packed a change of clothes and got into the car and set off. The ride there was filled with landscape of green grass, houses spread out around the countryside, and windmills placed here and there! It was very cool to see the windmills. Other than that it reminded me a lot of home really. The long stretch of countryside was nice to see and made me miss home a small bit.

Once we got into the city, we had to park at the civic center called AJAX, and we took a train into Amsterdam and made our way to the street called the Dam, which is the popular street in Amsterdam. It was also where our hotel was located too :D

Once we found our hotel, we checked in and took the tiny elevator up to our room. The carpet was kind of bad, had something like bleach it looked like it, but it was really just to sleep in, so it was fine. We got free breakfast in the morning too, so bonus haha!

We started out for the day and walked down the street of the Dam. We stopped to take pictures by an obelisk, and across from it was the Royal Palace of the Queen. It wasn’t as grand as some other palaces that I’ve seen, but it was still pretty big!

We turned around to go towards the boat canal tours. On the way we stopped to get lunch. It was called a croquet, and was delicious! It is supposedly a variety of meats all in a kind of tube style, that is deep fried. Served with mustard, it was very yummy! :D We ate it with fries while we walked towards the tour place. There were two different colored lines to take for the boat tours that stopped at historical places all around Amsterdam.

We took the boat that was going towards the Anne Frank house. That was our first stop.
We took pictures outside of her home. It was quite nice area, with the canal right outside the buildings. It was weird though, thinking if Anne had ever seen anything that I was looking at now. We then waited in line for our tickets and made our way upstairs to the Attic. Technically we were not supposed to take pictures or videos, but no one yelled at me so I just continued to video and take a couple of pics. Plus there were other people doing the same thing.

We went through the bookshelf, after taking a picture of course :D, and came up to the main floor that the Damm family slept in, which was also the living room. The kitchen was connected to that and then Anne’s room. She still had pictures on her wall too, that the Nazi’s didn’t take down. Everything that existed in the house was taken however, when the Nazi’s invaded. The kitchen things were still there, such as a stove and a sink. The attic, where Anne and Peter would sometimes go to talk or hang out, was closed with a glass window over it. That was so people could still see up to the window, but not go up there. Then we walked back downstairs to the museum part, where there were videos, pictures, and some artifacts from the concentration camps from victims. Mostly it was talked about the Frank & Van Dam family, what happened to them after they were all captured. A video of the Frank’s friend Miep, talking on a video of what happened. Another video was a friend of Anne’s who helped feed her in the concentration camp, and then never heard from her again. Anne had died the week before her camp was rescued. Her dad was also on another video, and he talked about how he had read Anne’s diary. He said that that was a side of Anne that he never had seen before, and how smart and grown up she seemed. It was very sad to listen to all of the stories and the whole factory felt eerie and sad.
After buying some souvenirs at the gift shop for my sister Mimi, since she likes all of that WWII era stuff, we left the factory and headed outside.

We stopped to have a drink at a pub while waiting for the boat to come back. We hopped back on the boat and headed on over to the I Amsterdam sculpture to take pictures. We then walked across this park to go to the Vincent Van Gogh museum. He is originally from Amsterdam and then moved to Paris to study art and lived there with his brother and his sister-in-law. He worked in the Montmartre district of Paris.

We were not allowed to take pictures, but we saw a good number of some of his famous art pieces. He liked to paint the workers in the fields, hard working class really. His “Starry Starry Night” portrait was in New York though. But there were a lot of other good pieces to look at and read about. He worked and lived with another impressionist artist for a while, but there personalities did not go well together, and Vincent moved out. This was also around the time when he started to go crazy. We did see one of his more famous paintings called “The Potato Eaters”. He was also influenced on Japanese art and did a number of paintings and catalog work during that time. While in the museum, I had Marielle listen to the “Starry Starry Night” song that Josh Groban sings hehe.

After we were done in the museum, we walked along the more expensive part of Amsterdam, where Burberry, Polo, Armani, and all of the high society stores were. We were getting a little hungry and we made our way over to a square to find a pub called the Three Sisters Grand Pub. It’s a chain that is supposedly all around the world. We sat down next to a table of men who were all really drunk already and it wasn’t even the end of the afternoon!! I ordered a cherry flavored beer called Kriek. It was good, and they didn’t have Strongbow haha, but I was the one that wanted to try something else as well.

Marielle got a glass of white wine and Erwin ordered beer after beer. The guys at the table next to us were being mean and making fun of Erwin’s weight. I asked why they were being so rude, and Marielle said that the Dutch are really honest with their feelings, hmm…weird.

Erwin decided to stay and have a couple more drinks while Marielle and I went over to H&M across the street, where I ended up buying a swim suit and a blue dress shirt, along with black stockings to go with my new outfit from Sweden :D When we got back to the pub, Erwin was talking to the guys next to him. They all asked me what I bought, and when they found out that I was American they started trying to speak in English, but failed a lot of the time.

Before we left the pub, the guys next to us (ok they were middle aged men to be honest) asked for some Euros, because they were short 20 I think. We said no, but asked them how much their bill was. It was 700 Euros!! They had all started drinking at 11 in the morning until about 6:30 when we left!!

We walked down another street to go find some place to eat dinner. We didn’t really have a preference until we saw this giant Chinese restaurant. It had 3 floors of seating!! But the fun part was that it was where the Red Light District started. Ok so maybe not fun but interesting haha.
The food was good and we all got soo full!

After dinner we headed out and Marielle and I walked arm in arm with Erwin walking behind us, and went into the Red Light District. It’s called the Red Light District due to all of the neon lights above the bars and sex shops/stores, as well as the windows with scantly clad women. It was an interesting experience and kind of weird too. Like, it’s a must see place to do in Amsterdam, but not all that interesting as it was more awkward than anything. I felt like a horse with blinders on, trying to keep my eyes straight ahead and not veer off to see the windows. If the women had customers, there were curtains over the windows. We turned down a side street and saw a guy come out of one of the window/doors. He kissed the woman’s hand and headed to the next window!! Crazy!

I was also glad that Erwin was with us, for protection and support. It wasn’t that bad, just a little weird being surrounded my tourists and creepy men really. More tourists just walking along the street mainly. When we had had our fill of seeing the Red Light District, we headed down another street to take us back to the hotel. I could smell the pot in the air. It was VERY strong. And for general information, a coffee shop may sell coffee, but it is predominantly going to sell pot. They looked ok from the windows that I saw. Amsterdam tries to keep the environments safe for the tourist and people that come into the stores. But it was so heavy in the air that night, that my contacts were starting to dry out a little, it was so strong in the air!
We also passed by one of the famous pot factories called the Grasshopper on our way back to the hotel.

Once back at the hotel, we crashed and fell asleep right away after our busy day.
On Friday the 9th of April, woke up, took showers, ate breakfast at the hotel restaurant, then left our baggage in the baggage closet while we did some more sight seeing. We started out on the boats again, this time heading out to the Rembrandt statues. On the way we stopped at a coffee shop, an actual coffee place to drink coffee lol. On the street I spotted a Heineken Bier Wagon being pulled by Clydesdale horses! That was pretty cool! We also spotted one of the Ice Bars where people have to wear fur coats inside and are only allowed a certain amount of hours inside, due to everything being made out of ice inside the bar!! But it wasn’t open during the day, so I just took a picture of it from the outside.

Once we were done visiting the Rembrandt statues, we went over to a flower market. There were soo many stands full of all kinds of flowers, plants, bulbs, garden things etc. It was pretty cool. I bought some tulips for my mom to have actual Holland tulips.

Next we went to another market, that kind of reminded me of Portobello Road. It had tons of stuff. Food, clothes, home décor, garden things, shoes, all kinds of stuff. We tried these waffles that had some kind of maple syrup in the middle of it. Yumm hehe.

Once we found nothing in the market that we needed to buy, we headed back to the hotel to get our things. On the way we bought some hot dogs and ate them as we walked. Got our luggage, took the train back to the AJAX center and got back into the car.

The next place to go on the agenda was to go to this Zaanse Schans museum. The museum itself was closed but there was still a lot to do there. We first got our picture taken by some of the workers so that we could buy them on the way out before we left. They had us stand in a spot where the windmills would be in the background of the picture.

Then we decided since it was late in the afternoon that we would head over to the windmills to look into them and then do some shopping and stuff afterwards.

The one we went into was a windmill that sawed giant logs of wood. We watched a video on how it was made, then how it works to cut the wood. We went down some stairs to the part where the saws cut the logs and a man running the windmill told us about it all. The windmill wasn’t sawing too much due to the lack of wind when we were there, but the guy went up top outside to push one of the wings to start it so that we would be able to see it work. It was neat to see I thought.
After we were done in the windmill we headed back outside. There were houses and little farm islands where billy goats were sitting and eating grass. There were also chickens around and some cows too. We wandered around the little town place for a bit and then decided to go into this shop that sold all kinds of cheeses! It was great because they let you test out the cheeses. I had an apple from breakfast, so I had Marielle try apples and cheese together since she had never had that before! It was great haha! I ended up buying two kinds of cheeses to take home with me.

The other store we went into was the clog store. It had hundreds of clogs, all different kinds too. There was first the story of how the clog came be made, what different kinds were made in the early stages of the clog. Some very cool and scary looking ones were on display.

Then there were also all kinds of souvenirs to buy, a diamond shop in the middle of the store and funny hats as well, which I had to try one of them on for fun of course haha!
After we were done in the stores, we were ready to head on home to Made. Before we left the Zaanse Museum though, we looked at the pictures that the camera man took of us when we got there. I ended up liking them both and bought 2 copies. Marielle bought one too and has it up at her house now :D

Once we were home, we ended up going out to the local Made pub a few drinks with Marielle, Erwin, Annet, and her boyfriend. It was fun and we talked a long while. We walked back home and went to sleep after a looong day.

Swedish meatballs, trolls, moose! Oh My! The Swedish Adventures :)

When I saw Jen get into the luggage area, I left my bench and yelled, “Jennifer Rago!” Hehe she looked around and we hugged! It was very nice to see a familiar face, and I had missed her as well! Even though we’d been gone from Canterbury for like 3-4 days haha!

I got to stay with Jen and her grandmother’s cousin Anders and his wife Elizabeth. They had a lovely house and their front yard over looked an amazing lake!! They had the cutest little sheltie puppy named Leonard ;D He was so sweet, but you had to be careful about your scarfs, fingers, hair etc. because he liked to bite haha!

We got to sleep on a gigantic air mattress, with actual sheets this time haha, in some parts of Europe they don’t believe in sheets with a duvet cover haha ;)

While we were unpacking, Elizabeth and Anders were making us dinner. It was soo good! They were SOO nice to make us breakfast AND dinner almost every night! It was so good too haha!

Our breakfast’s were the same, but very good. We had hard boiled eggs, in the little eggs cups, and I was unsure of how to actually open it. I’ve seen people eat them in the movies, but had never had one for myself for breakfast haha! So Anders laughed at me and helped us open our eggs :D I felt kind of stupid, because all you have to do is tap the top of the egg on the table, then take off the shell on the top and scoop your spoon into the rest of the egg. It was delicious! Anders had us try it with a tube of caviar, so try everything at least once haha, and it was gross!! Haha sorry but I am not a fan of caviar haha!

The first morning in Stockholm, we slept in after a hard day of traveling and much needed rest. Then we got dressed, had breakfast, and then Anders dropped Jen and I off at the metro station to go into the city of Stockholm. The subway was very easy to figure out, only 4 different trains to choose from.

We had the rest of the day to just wander around the Old Town, called Gamla Stan, and get our bearings for the city. It was very pretty, with a lot of the houses and buildings colored on the front. The story behind it is that the King Gustaf III traveled to places like Paris and Italy, saw the colors and wanted his whole city of Stockholm to look like it. So he decided to have everyone paint their homes in gold. But unfortunately, not a lot of people had gold paint or could not afford enough paint that looked the color of gold, so some of the homes have just the front of their houses painted in gold. The king never really knew I suppose haha.

We walked around the streets, and found out where the first royal palace is, went to a couple of souvenir shops, ate lunch at an Italian restaurant, talked about our travels, mine about Paris, Jen’s about Prague & Salzburg. The whole town is surrounded by water, with a lot of tourist boats for boat tours, as well as sail boats for the people that live and work there.
I also learned to beware of the bike paths along the streets. They look like sidewalks except for the bike signs on the ground. Me of course not looking at the ground but at the time, I was looking at the Royal Palace, heard this "Bling! Bling!" sound and stopped. I was unsure of which way to move, so I did the first thing that came into my head and moved to the right. Bad move Shannon! I ended up moving righ into an elderly man on a bike. Who had no problem yelling at me in Swedish and me just responding with the "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" and not speaking any Swedish haha! I wasn't hurt, and I don't think that he was, since he had the time to yell at me. He didn't fall off his bike either, so that was good too I suppose haha. It was just me being a tourist and not being aware of my surroundings at the time haha!
So I learned VERY quickly to beware of the bikes in Sweden!!
Once we were done exploring for the day we headed back home and Anders picked us up from the station.

The next morning we took a boat to the Vasa Museum. It is a 15th century ship made for Gustaf III for his war and also as a show-off ship. His crew was building the ship. It usually takes ship builders about 1 ½ years but this ship was special and took 2 ½ years to make. To test the ship to see if it was ready, what the crew members usually did was run back and forth across the ships top deck to see how many times it would take to make the ship tip to one side. It was a lot like what happens in Pirates of the Caribbean 3, when they had to save Johnny Depp. Well it took a lot less runs for what a ship usually needs to pass the sailing test. So that was a bad sign. But the ship builders decided to continue to build the ship anyway. When it was ready to set sail out of the port, there was a grand ceremony. The cannons fired off and the ship was ready to set sail out of the harbor. Well there was a big gust of wind that tipped the ship to one side. Then a stronger gust started to sink the ship!! It had only sailed 20 minutes out of the harbor and it started to sink!! The townspeople pitched in to go out and save the crew. Only 15 men died out of the 150 on board. The ship builders had to send a message to Gustaff III to tell him that his ship sank! He wasn’t very happy, but no one was blamed when they held a trial. The whole mystery behind the sinking of the Vasa ship was due to it’s structure. The ship builders decided for some stupid reason to put the heavier cannons on the first deck and then the lighter cannons on the second deck. There was not enough stones in the hull (bottom of the ship) to keep the ship weighted down. Then the back of the ship was too heavy and grand as well. So thus the sinking of the Vasa ship.

There were lots of things to see and do inside the museum as well. You could explore some artifacts, feel what it was like to walk along a ship deck, see a couple of movies about how the ship was made, what it was used for and when it was discovered in the 1960’s. All in all a fun visit to see.

Once we were done, we hopped back on the boat and went back to Old Town. For dinner that night we had an interesting meal. We had one slice of bread with mayo, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggs, and little shrimps on top and then more mayo haha. It was an interesting sandwich. I’ve never had that kind of sandwich before, ioit was good :D

On Saturday morning, Anders and Elizabeth took us to a very old 1600’s home out in the country. A friend of theirs lives in it with his wife, and the home used to be a soldier’s barracks. They still had an old stove that they still used and outside their backyard was a beautiful lake too!

After that, Anders and Elizabeth took us to Drottingham where the royal family resides. We went on a tour and there of course were amazing colored in gold, huge rooms, lots of portraits, and lovely gardens as well! It kind of reminded me of the palace at Versailles, but maybe a little bit smaller hahaha!

We hung out at the house once we were done. Anders’ son came over and brought his little children to hang out with their grandparents. Benjamin who is about 6 and Tindra who is 4. They were so cute, and Tindra became our best new friend by the time she left haha :D

Sunday involved a boat tour of Stockholm. It was a lot of fun to see some historical sights such as an old orphanage home for children that was huge and very nice! There was also a theme park that the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix & The Rolling Stones played in the past! Pretty cool! After the boat tour we walked around a part of Stockholm called Soddermalm, which used to be a dodgy part of town but now is very posh, with a lot of shopping!! So we were going to window shop but found this cute store called Gina Tricot, very cool store :D I ended up really liking this one navy blue dress, so I tried it on and got it :D

We ended up watching the Skeleton Key, hanging out, and figuring out what to do for the next couple of days that we had left.

On Monday we had planned to go to this island called Sandham, but we first of all had a hard time trying to find the boat, and ended up not making the boat time to catch it to Sandham. We decided then to try to find the National Museum, but since it was a Monday, of course it was closed haha, so we then decided to go to the Royal Palace and see the changing of the guard. It was kind of funny because a group of the soldiers started to kind of march/doing some kind of leg lifts and I tried not to laugh but it was very hard! We wandered around the city for a while longer, looking to get the right boat for the next day. After the palace we were getting hungry so we found this tiny little restaurant and got to enjoy REAL Swedish meatballs with salad and mashed potatoes and loganberries on the side! They had this yummy sauce and were very good! So now I’ve had Swedish meatballs in Sweden! Haha!

Once we were finished doing some more souvenir shopping, we went back to the house and talked over dinner about the differences from the States and what it is like in Sweden. Anders and Elizabeth had been to the States a number of times and they liked Florida a lot haha!
On Tuesday we woke up extra early so as to make the boat to go to Sandham. The island of Sandham is a little town island around Stockholm. We landed on the island and ventured around for a while. It was a cute little town and we felt like we were the only tourists visiting it haha, everyone else was a local, which we only saw about two or so people other than us out and about haha!

It was so quiet there and we ended up wandering along this path in some woods. I felt like I was in Lord of the Rings or something hehe, where and when was Legolas (ie Orlando Bloom) going to show up?? :D No such luck! And I didn’t see any moose in the woods either!!
(There were a lot of moose souvenirs all around Sweden and I expected to see one in the woods! Maybe it wasn't the right season to see moose haha ho hum, oh well, maybe next time :D haha)

At the end of the path there was a very pretty view of the water. We ventured onto someone’s dock, thinking that we would just tell them that we didn’t know if was a private beach (if they spoke English haha) but luckily we saw no one, and enjoyed taking pictures and listening to the wildlife across the way, mostly sea gulls squawking on another island ;) But then something horrible happened!!

I was passing my camera to Jen to take a picture and it slipped out of my hands and landed onto the dock where we were standing!! It didn’t break open or anything, but the lens wouldn’t go back into itself correctly whenever I tried to turn it on and off!!! So for the rest of the time I had to have Jen take pictures. I was sad, but it was also not too horrible, considering that this was almost the end of my travels, and that my camera didn’t break earlier!

So looking on the bright side of things, we decided to head back into the small town, have some lunch in a cute little light house/hotel kind of restaurant and then back onto the boat to take us back to Stockholm. When we got back into Old Town, we had some time to spare and I really wanted to go into the National Museum since they were having an art exhibit on Toulouse Lautrec! It was about an hour or so to closing time, so Jen didn’t want to waste the money, but I didn’t mind and bought myself a ticket. Jen said that she would enjoy the atmosphere outside while I was gone.

It was an amazing museum, and I wished that I had had a longer time to look and enjoy all of the art in sooo many rooms!! But I headed up to the second floor to the Toulouse Lautrec part of the museum. It was so cool! Just to see the different places that he painted, actually knowing where some of them were, since Toulouse spent a lot of his time in the Moulin Rouge haha! Other pictures were very pretty and some very artsy as well. I kind of felt that I was glimpsing into what Paris was like during late 1800’s. There were also pictures of Toulouse himself, little messages on the walls that told some things of his life.

That afternoon for dinner, Anders has a cousin who is also related to Jen, so we all ate dinner at Oakey’s and his wife’s house, which is right around the corner from Anders’ home! They were all very nice and kept feeding us so much food! I felt that I was going to be HUGE when I got to Amsterdam because of how much food and drink that they kept offering us haha!
After dinner Anders, Elizabeth, Jen, and I took a walk along the lake and got to see a very pretty sunset. We slowly wandered back to their home to pack our things and sleep for our last night in Stockholm.

The next morning Anders and Oakey and his wife, along with Jen, took me to the bus station, which would then take me to the main airport in Stockholm. I said goodbye to them all, thanked them soo much for everything and said that I would see Jen soon when I got back to the States.
I had an amazing time in Sweden and would like to return some day, but I think that Anders and Elizabeth kept telling us to come back and visit in the summer time when the weather is much nicer! Which would be so much fun, since they have a speed boat! We could coast around from island to island :D Haha!

Thank you for reading Swedish travels, and now our next destination will be Made, Holland, where things are Made in Made haha! Coming soon! :D

The Paris Tour from my student Anne-Caroline

When I got into Paris’ Gare du Nord bus station, I was looking around for Anne-Caroline because she said that she was going to meet me when I got off the bus. No Anne, so I ventured off looking around for her. No luck, so I called her cell phone, and no luck there either. Where was she??
I ended up getting a taxi cab to go to her apartment. I thought that I would be able to find her there. When the taxi driver helped me with my luggage, over to her apartment, she wasn’t home. So he let me call her cell phone and I left a message to tell her that I would be waiting in this café up the street. It was dark outside, and a little creepy, so I didn’t want to wait for her outside.
While waiting inside the café, I kept trying to get a hold of Anne. I sat in the café and the bartender lady offered me something to drink. I spluttered the first French drink word that came into my head, which was un café. Haha, so not being a big fan of strong coffee, I got this espresso, which I tired not to make a face whenever I took a sip. It was so strong!
Then Anne came into the café and gave me a big hug! She said that she was sorry that she was late and that she got caught babysitting for a neighbor for an emergency of some sort. I didn’t mind, I was just glad to see her! I thanked the café people and we made our way to her apartment. We got my luggage and ourselves into the tiny elevator (as most French elevators are small, just a good fact to know ;D ) and into her apartment.
It was a small apartment, but if she’s only by herself, it works out all right :D I thought that it was cute. She has a foyer/kitchen. Then into her dining room/bedroom/entertainment room as well. Her bed turns into a couch by day. She has a little balcony that is quite high and you can somewhat see out over the buildings, so it’s pretty at night.
Once we had all of my stuff inside, we talked about what to do for dinner. We ended up going out to this restaurant called the Hippopotamus Grill. It was very cool. We got drinks, a tequila sunrise and a sex on the beach. The tequila sunrise was better though :D Then we picked out our 3 courses. We both got French onion soups, I got a steak and pomme frites (French fries) and for desert I had chocolate mousse :D It was great to catch up with her and talk about what we had been doing. How studying in England went and how much I missed being there already!
By the time dinner was over, it was midnight!! Time seemed to fly by! After dinner we went past her work, which is the Mougador Theater featuring Le Roi Lion (the Lion King) We headed back to her apartment and crashed for the night.
The next morning, I woke up with a good feeling in my head because today we were going to Disneyland Paris!! Whoo-Hoo!! We got changed and ready, then headed out to the metro station. Got a special ticket for the train to transfer out to Disneyland Paris, and were there within the hour. We came up the escalator and then I turned my head to the left and there was the park!! I felt like I was at home!! So there were the two parks, Magic Kingdom and MGM Studios. We decided, when we were in line for the tickets, to just do Magic Kingdom, since there wasn’t a lot of time to do both of the parks. We took pictures of us in front of Main Street, once we were inside, and listening to the Disney town music all around, I felt like I was in Florida (well except that it was a lot colder than Florida haha).
We picked out which rides we wanted to do and then started off with the first one. We decided to get fast passes to Space Mountain, then go do the Alice’s Tea Cup ride, and then go back to Space Mountain. It was a while to do the Alice ride, because of the line, but it went by fast. Once we did that, we were back in line at Space Mountain!! While waiting in line, we were talking and a group of teenagers found out that I was American. I told them that I spoke un petite peu francais lol. They ended up talking to us a little while and they said that they had these extra fast passes that they weren’t using, so we got an extra fast pass for the ride! Once we got to the beginning of the line and into our car seats, the ride took off!! It was sooo much fun!! It went upside down, turned sideways and went super fast! It was great! Once we got off, we looked at our pictures and bought the one that they take of you when you’re on the ride! It was the best out of the 3 times that we rode the ride haha :D
We decided to get a quick bite to eat at Pinocchio’s Restaurant. It wasn’t my usual 4 star lunch that my family and I have when we’re in Disney, but it suited both Anne and my budgets lol :D I had a cheeseburger and so did she, along with French fries and sodas.
After lunch we headed over to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. We waited in line for that, it didn’t take too long. Anne and I entertained ourselves with taking videos on my camera, talking about looking for Capt’n Jack Sparrow & Will Turner ;D We’re so silly haha! It was the old version of the ride, no Johnny Depp mechanical statues in this ride :D Oh well haha it was still a lot of fun to sing along with the Pirates song, “Yo ho yo ho a Pirates life fer me”
After the Pirates ride, we went on the Indiana Jones roller coaster. We were telling one another jokes, well Anne was telling jokes, I couldn’t think of any haha. “How many A’s are there in Indiana Jones”
“2 you say?”
“Nope, 36”
“Da da da, da da da, da da da da, da da da da da da” haha I thought it was funny ;D
After that ride we went on Big Thunder Mountain, then over to Star Tours, and then lastly we did the Buzz Lightyear ride. We both got up to the third kind of space cadet ;D haha
When we came out of the Buzz Lightyear ride, it was SNOWING outside! I couldn’t believe it! I was in Paris, for one thing, then I was in Disneyland for a second thing, and then it was snowing! It was so weird! Lol! Pretty cool I thought!
After our rides, we shopped around Main Street for my family and I also bought some postcards too :D I got my Dad a Disney 2008 Paris hat, Mom a Disney pin, (they didn’t have any Mickey Mouse antenna toppers due to Europe not having antenna’s on their cars lol ) Mimi a Jack Skeleton scarf, and then 3-4 postcards, along with a Disneyland Paris 2008 t-shirt pour moi :D
Before we left, we decided to get hot chocolates and a cookie :D Anne got a discount because she told the Disney till man that she works for the Roi Lion show, and technically he wasn’t supposed to discount her since the show is not related to the park per se, but he did anyway, which was nice of him! I love Disney haha. When we were finishing our hot chocolates, we met this weird Disney busser name Nikodim, and he was just being a goof, when we were filming him haha. He wasn’t French, but Italian I think :D
We sadly had to leave the park due to it closing at 10 pm, and when we got back on the escalator, I felt like my fun was gone. I don’t know what it was, it’s just this feeling when you’re in Disney that you feel young and happy haha. Oh well haha I can go back some day, when I have more money of course haha!
We ended up eating dinner at a Fondue place and it was a lot of fun. Anne was telling me that if you dropped the one of the bread pieces into the pot of cheese you had to do a dare. But seeing as how we were the only ones in the restaurant, we decided not to do the dares haha.
We headed back towards Anne’s apartment and rented a dvd from this weird kind of electronic movie rental shop. You put your card into the machine, then you type what movie you would like, and the machine gets it and spits it out for you. It was very cool! We rented this movie called Paris Je’Taime. It’s a movie that has 18 different directors who each directed a short film in the movie. It was very cool, however all in French, with no English subtitles. So Anne was translating it for me, until she fell asleep haha. So I had to make due with my un petit peu francais, but it was all right, and I got through all of it. There were parts in it that were not in French because they were American or British actors and stories. It was very cool to see all of these places that were filmed in the movie because I would see the Pere Lachaise cemetery and go, “I’ve been there!” or the Montmartre district too! It was very cool to see a movie and say that I’ve been to those places!
On Easter Monday, Anne and I got up early and got ready to go and meet her dad, his girlfriend, (anne’s dad’s girlfriends son) Anne’s sister, and her boyfriend. It was a ways away out from Paris. We met them all at Anne’s sister’s house, in a very nice neighborhood too. Anne’s dad and sister speak a good amount of English, but most of the time they would all just speak in French. I didn’t mind at all though, I mean that’s what would happen when we would have Anne, Marielle, or Mechty visit us, we would speak English whenever we had family around our house. It was fine, I just smiled, tried to understand some of what they were talking about, but just enjoying being around accented voices haha!
We went to this restaurant for easter brunch. It was a very nice place, that used to be a house I think. We had a table all to ourselves in what looked like a big yellow sun room. We started out with appetizer dishes. I had crab inside cooked egg shell noodles, along with a glass of red wine that we all shared. Then came our main course meals and I had slices of duck with mashed potatoes. For desert I had mon favorite crème brulee! Anne got crepes, and they had this kind of sugar on it, where the waiter would light it on fire! It was so cool to see!
After brunch we went back to Anne’s sister’s house and hung out there for a while. Anne’s sister showed me her wedding dress picture, it was so pretty! She’s getting married in June I think. Her fiancée was very nice and funny too! We then had to catch the train back home and we said good bye to everyone. It was a lot of fun meeting them and seeing how they spend their Easter day together.
We ended up just hanging out at her apartment for the night. We watched Pirates of the Caribbean and then went to sleep. Anne wrote down some places for me that I could go shopping. And how to get there and to the Musee D’Orsay museum as well.
The next morning, Anne had to go to work, and she was also planning on getting me a ticket for the Roi Lion show for later that night as well.
I got up, showered, and headed on out to find some gifts for my friends, and a scarf for myself :D
I ended up finding the first place where I was supposed to go shopping, but I didn’t really see any places that I wanted to buy anything. I got a croissant chicken, mayo, lettuce, sandwich with chips and a soda for a quick bite to eat. I then tried to find the area of the Musee D’Orsay, since I knew that there had to be some shopping carts/stores around there to buy souvenirs.
I got a little lost, because on the map it looked like I was going the right way, but I was turned the other way around. So I was actually going away from the museum. But I asked some people on the street, in my broken French, and a man told me that I needed to get on this one bus to take it to the area by the Jardins des Tuileries. So I did that, and ended up back by the two fountains and the Obelisk. It was in the middle of the area by the Champs Elysees, and the Louvre. So I knew that there was a metro station to take to go to the Musee D’Orsay. So as I was walking towards the fountains, I had my hands in my pockets, and I ended up tripping on something, and I fell! Haha I was all right, a little embarrassed, and I also really really had to use the loo! So I also knew that there were restrooms at the end of the gates of the Jardins des Tuileries. So I went to the loo, and also decided to get a crepe with nutella, because I felt sad, all alone and needed something to cheer me up! I was really missing my friends, and a certain someone who I left back in England, and really really really wanted him to be with me, because Duh! It was Paris, the city of Love!
So I made it on the metro and another train transfer to get to the museum. I waited in line for about a half hour and then had to go through their security system and get a ticket. As I was in line, I looked over to my left and saw one of my friends from school at Christ Church. We called him American Ben, because we had a friend who was called British Ben haha. So I saw American Ben and his mom and his girlfriend getting ready to leave! I couldn’t believe it! We gave one another a hug, I asked how he was doing, where they were going next, the Eiffel Tower, and hope that they had fun! It was so funny to see a familiar face again! I forgot that he was going to be there when I was also in Paris haha!
So I made my way through the 3 floors of the museum, looking at all of the cool art work of the impressionist painters! I took pictures once I saw other people taking them and not getting yelled at haha. I got a picture of James Whistler: the picture of the old mother sitting in the chair; Manet: pictures of fruit on a table; Renoir: the picture of the french party; Renoir's drawing of Claude Monet. Van Gogh: of himself. Are just a few of the pictures I saw while in the museum. There was this one room all covered in gold! I felt like I was in one of the rooms at the Versailles palace. I made the mistake of looking out the window and seeing a beautiful scenery of Paris, with the houses, another museum down the street on the opposite side of the Seine, and the Seine river. I almost started to cry, I wanted to be have that someone in England there with me! It was very hard for me that day, than any other day in Paris I think. I didn’t realize how much I would miss being with him, or even just to see my friends again too! I missed our adventures of eating crepes and gelato, traveling around the city, using the subway and seeing amazing places in Paris.
Once I was finished in the museum, I had had enough time to go through all 3 floors, I made my way over to the Mougador Theater to see Le Roi Lion! Whoo-hoo!! I got some dinner at the Café Mougador while waiting for the show. I got un thé glacé, un omelette avec jambon et fromage et un chocolate mousse pour le desert :D Haha ( an iced tea, an omelette with ham and cheese, and a chocolate mousse for desert).
I got my ticket when the doors to the theater were starting to let people into the theater. I ended up having a great seat, that was half the cost! Thanks to Anne working there, my ticket was only 47 Euros instead of the 100 Euro ticket that I would have had to pay! And my seat was in the first balcony in the middle! It was perfect view of the stage too! The show was fantastic!!! Even if it was all in French, I knew the story well enough from watching it on video so many times that it wasn’t hard to understand at all :D The costumes were sooo cool, the music amazing, and the actors great! I loved it all! It was a fun show and am glad that I was able to do it!
After the show I ended up meeting up with Fabrice, my first French host student, and also Anne came to join us back at the Mougador Café for drinks. I got a hot chocolate and so did Anne, while Fabrice had a coffee. We talked about the old times, how Fabrice remembers going to talk to the students at Richwoods High School in their French class :D I told him about England, how much Anne and he both pay for their small apartments in Paris, and we talked about his new job, still in the same lab inside a zoo, where he now got upgraded to work on lab mice, or something along those lines haha.
Then the restaurant was closing, so we had to leave. Anne and I headed back to her apartment and we said goodbye to Fabrice. It was a lot of fun getting to spend time with both of them, and that had actually been the first time since they’ve met each other haha.
The next morning Anne had to go to work again, and I had to catch my bus to get to the airport and go to Sweden. We said our goodbyes and how much we would miss each other! I had such a great time hanging out with her, meeting her family and seeing her side of Paris :)
So she left for work, I had all of my stuff packed and got a taxi that took me to the bus station. Then I got onto a bus and rode it to the airport. I said goodbye to Paris as I was leaving and listening to my ipod. So sad.
I got off the bus, got my luggage, then waited in line ahead of a tall student guy, who asked me if we would need to pay extra for our luggage. I told him I wasn’t sure and that they would probably tell us when we get to the front. We started talking and his name is Raphael Barry, an engineering student from Paris, studying in Sweden. He was on break visiting his grandmother in Paris. I told him I was meeting a friend in Sweden and we ended up sitting together on the plane. We both had to pay extra for our luggage, but mine was about 100 something Euros because it was very heavy. The up side was that I got to be an V.P. passenger and got on the plane early. So I saved Raphael a seat and we talked the whole plane ride. I asked him about Sweden and what fun things there was to do there. He turned out to be a fan of jazz and told me of this jazz club that he likes to go to and play sometimes. He said that he didn’t particularly like living in Stockholm because it was kind of an old person type of city. But he gave me his phone number in case Jen and I had nothing to do and wanted to hang out. It was interesting to talk to another person and get a view on what Sweden was like. When we landed, there was snow on the ground, and I wasn’t too excited about it in the beginning, because I was used to the milder weather of England and France.
So I got my luggage at the luggage area and waited on a bench for Jen’s plane to get into the airport.
So that is the end of my Paris trip and now it’s onto the adventures in Stockholm Sweden!! Whoo-Hoo!!

My Last Week in Canterbury, England :( sniff sniff

Ok, sorry that I have been non-existent for the past couple of weeks….I was very busy with school, hanging out with friends, and enjoying my last couple of days in Canterbury, when not doing my essays/finishing my essays ;)
So…I left off on my trip back from Ireland. The morning we were back, (at around 4am) I slept for a couple of hours and then started writing my American Cinema paper. When I got that finished on Wednesday and turned it into school.

On Thursday, Erin, Jen, Mallory, Patrick, Laura and I went to Orange Street Café. Had a great time listening to jazz music. A cool saxophonist played and the pictures on the wall, along with the lighting and friends all added to the fun of the place.

That Friday we went to Stonehenge and Bath to the Jane Austen museum. It was a looonng bus ride, but we made it. We were given a little pocket hand held walkie talkie to punch in numbers around the outside of Stonehenge to listen to it’s history, the myths and legends of the stones. Some of them were rather funny too. One was that the devil stole them from an old lady’s back yard and dropped them all over England. Apparently there are more around England, and not just at Stonehenge. Another one was about how Merlin found them and would use them for some kind of magic performances. Then the best one is that aliens dropped them off haha.
We walked all the way around and then it started to sprinkle outside. I bought a couple of postcards and looked around the shop. They had some snow globes with little Stonehenges in them haha.

Back on the bus to go to Bath. We had to park a ways off from where the actual street of the Jane Austen museum. It was located on Gay street. The town of Bath is quite quaint. The houses close together and quite a lot of winding roads and hills.
Some of the students were not too excited about going to the Jane Austen museum, some because they don’t read any of her books, others because they thought it was for girls. So they went off to go see the Baths, which is kind of what I wanted to do, but felt obligated to go to the museum for Bevin, since she would totally kill me if I didn’t go inside. There was a tour throughout this house (not Jane Austen’s house, hers was up the street, that she shared with her sister). There was a video on her life and what she did in Bath. Basically, she and her sister didn’t enjoy it very much and much rather preferred the countryside. Then we went upstairs to this other room where a tour guide told us further about Jane Austen’s family, life in Bath and the books she wrote. It was all right, but I probably would have liked to have gone with my friends to the Baths…oh well, next time I think ;)
Once we ate lunch and we then returned to the area where the bus was and made our way back to Canterbury.

That following week I was super busy with finishing essays for British Literature and Modern Britain.
Plus on top of the essays that we had to turn in, we also had to have 2 in class essays, each one hour long. So my friends and I were frantically getting our essays completed and some how manage to sleep as well haha. I wrote on the Romanticism of a handful of different poets of the Romantic period, for my British Literature class. Then the in class essays were about our stories we read, one being the social classes in Great Expectations, and the other essay was on Frankenstein the monster and how certain characters in it were alike ie) the monster, the captain, and Dr. Frankenstein.

The Modern Britain essay I turned in was about the “Special Relationship” between England and America. Then one of the in-class essays was on the British monarchy and the other on how the Prime Minister and the President of the United States are alike.
Finally, our last day of classes were complete, our essays turned in, and we were free!! I thought that I did well on my essays, and I found out that I got an A on my ethics essay already. It was about moral relativism between these two authors in our handbook, I had to compare their ideas etc..So that is good and none of us know the other grades yet, but hopefully we will get them soon!!

Now done with our essays, a lot of us hung out at Spoons for the night, laughing, talking, having a good ol’time ;D It was also Erin’s last night in Canterbury, so we enjoyed our last moments together in Canterbury with her and all of our friends! : ( So sad : (

On Thursday, I ate lunch with Jen, Mallory, and Patrick at Café des Amis for the last time. We talked about how much we were all going to miss being in Canterbury, walking around High Street, hanging out at the local pubs, going to classes together, basically seeing one another almost every day haha :D
I had to head home to wait for the luggage man to get my suit case that I was sending home ahead of me, due to my overspending on clothes, books, a Strongbow glass, clothes, and other things haha. It was basically things that I wouldn’t need to take with me for my two weeks of traveling after March 23, that I was sending home.

Later that Thursday night, all of us, minus Erin, ate one last time at the restaurant we all first ate at in the beginning, Super Noodles. It was good, and I had a great time hanging out with my friends, talking about where we would be going after school, getting together on Friday night for one last drink at Spoons. After dinner, Jen, Megan, Patrick, and I headed over to Parham Road to watch the movie Devil Wears Prada (since Megan had never seen it) and spent the night there, in one of the extra rooms.

Woke up on Friday morning and made breakfast with Jen and our friend Ashley. We made pancakes, but had no eggs, so they were interesting pancakes to say the least haha ;D
Went home to shower, and then hung out with one of my British friends for the day. It was great just walking around High Street, walking along a canal with swans in it, basically having a great time and enjoying the perfect weather outside! We went into the HMV (the British version of BestBuy) and I bought The Last King of Scotland and the first season of the British Office :D Then we sat at Starbucks talking, laughing and having a fun time ;D

Said good bye to my friend and then headed on home. I started to think of how much I will miss walking along the streets of Canterbury, hanging out with all of my friends, being with one British friend in particular, and all of these thoughts were jumping around in my mind, and I started to cry. I couldn’t help it and it was so sad to think that my dream is coming to an end.
Later that night, I had my last meal with Katerina, Michael, and Costas. We had spaghetti bolognese, with my favorite salad and chocolate mousse for desert! Yum!!
As a going away present/hosting me present, I got Costas an early birthday card, and a couple of gift certificates for the whole Grant family from our favorite chocolatier, Hotel Chocolate.
After dinner, all of the students (ICISP, ISU) met up for one last drink at Spoons and it was even more sad. It was horrible to think that I wouldn’t get to see everyone the next day, to hang out and go on trips. But we’re all keeping in touch through face book, as well as school too, so that is good.

Then I left Spoons with Megan after we‘d said all of our goodbyes, and we walked our last walk home together. We parted ways and I slept my last night in my comfy bed, not wanting the next day to happen at all really.

I got up the next morning, said goodbye to someone special at the train station, who I miss terribly, and then I sadly went home to pack all of my belongings into my suitcase.
Katerina ended up helping me pack, I left some things ie)all of my school notebooks, books I didn’t need, hair styling things for the next student that they will host, etc.
I also realized that I couldn’t fit everything into my suitcase, so Katerina let me borrow another one so that I will have to return it the next time I come back to visit them, which I SO WILL, as soon as I have the money haha ;D

Then we ate lunch together, I tried not to cry, and we got all of my stuff packed and ready to go. Costas came out of his room to say goodbye and help me with my luggage. Michael and Katerina both took me in their car to the bus station, where I was to take the bus from Canterbury to Paris. It was a little hectic, due to it being Easter Saturday, and lots of traffic. But I got there all right, and it was a somewhat rushed goodbye. Michael helped me with the luggage out of the car, Katerina walked with me and helped me with the luggage up the curb. We hugged and kissed twice on the cheek, (so British haha) and then they had to get back into their car and leave. The hurried goodbye was due to us all thinking that my bus was here already, so we said a quick goodbye and they got back into their car and had to move out the car out of the way of the taxis trying to get past. The bus however was going to London instead of Dover, and the driver had just not changed the sign.

So, I stood there kind of laughing to myself, and also having a whole shadow of sadness well up inside of me. I will miss living here and living my dream out, sooo much. It makes me almost cry just typing it all again. I try to think of all of the fun times I’ve had and not dwell on being sad. But it’s hard, I’ve learned and I don’t know what I will do. But I suppose, keep on going with this whole international business plan that I have, and then return in a couple of years, if not sooner.
Having had a great time, meeting a ton of new people, making friends, having a fun romance with a great British bloke, and being able to live in England with an English/Greek family, all was such a great part of my life. It’s something that I have never regretted once, and hope to return to Canterbury soon!
Now, this is where my last week in Canterbury ends, and the other adventures of Shannon Helms begin. Next stop, Paris France!!