I know, I’ve already talked about London once before. However, I went back this weekend and it is safe to say that like the title says, London has completely stolen my heart. To anyone thinking about studying abroad I’m talking to you: I strongly advise you to do it. I have only been here 3 weeks and I still have over 4 months, but I can say with certainty that these three weeks have been some of the best days of my life. So, just DO IT. You won’t ever regret it. Ok, now that I’m off my soap box, back to London.

Picadilly Circus

I went to London this weekend primarily to see the Harry Potter Studio Tour and it was, of course, incredible (and I strongly suggest that if you are ever in London, that you go to it.) But, that’s not what I want to talk about. After the tour, Jess and I decided that since we were already in London, and we had much of the day left, we would make a day of it see what London had to offer. It did not disappoint. We went to the Covent Gardens to look around (and no, there are no gardens, as Jess was disappointed to find out.) Covent Gardens is essentially a huge market place. There are layers and layers of outdoor and indoor market areas, shops, chain stores, cafes, restaurants, and pubs, and just when you think you’re finished, another layer pops up at you. It was so alive with people and street performers, you couldn’t help but get caught up in the happiness of it. I so enjoyed myself. We watched street performers dance to the YMCA with faces of famous people and saw a mime dressed up as an American soldier. We also listened to an opera singer perform. We walked through what was essentially, a huge flea market, as well. After the Covent Gardens, Jess and I found ourselves just wandering the city. I was completely in awe of the beauty and for lack of a better word, hugeness of it all. There was always another corner to turn and another street to walk. Always another beautiful building or monument to admire. It was dark out as well, so all the lights of the city were just beautiful. We just walked around and took everything in. It’ so easy to get caught up in everything around you. I could have walked forever, I was so enthralled with it all. At one point though, we realized we had no idea where we were, and it was a nervous 5 minutes for us until we got our bearings and realized we were just a block away from Trafalgar Square. And let me tell you, Trafalgar Square at night, is just gorgeous. It has fountains that light up different colors and the light from the fountains lit up the Trafalgar Monument in the middle of the Square. We walked around the Square and down Parliament Street past the Horses Guard, past the Prime Minister’s house, past Old Scotland Yard, toward Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. I am so blessed that I have the opportunity to see all of these things, not just once, but twice.

Covent Gardens!

Along the way we stopped at a pub called The Red Lion, where Charles Dickens got famously drunk at and we had some dinner. We ate a traditional dinner of fish and chips (the best fish and chips I’ve ever had, I might add) and took everything in. We said hi to Big Ben, and it was truly a spectacular sight at night. The clock was lit up and so beautiful against the night sky. The vastness of it never fails to impress me. I will never get tired of seeing Big Ben. We ended our night with a two hour Jack the Ripper walking tour, which was very interesting to say the very least. All in all, it was a marvelous day, and I cannot wait to go back to my favorite city in the world. London, England.
With love,
Abby

A Day in the Life of Abby

Common Meal

I live in Cambridge, England. I’m here mainly to travel Europe. However, in between those amazing traveling days, I do actually have to attend classes and lectures, clean the house, and all that mundane stuff. This blog is a little anticlimactic after blogging about London and Scotland and the excitement of the flight over, but most of my days will be spent in this house, and in this room where I’m writing now, and it’s important not to forget the little things that make this trip what it is. I have classes from Monday to Thursday morning (I get the rest of Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to travel every week) and I have to take Art Appreciation, History, Theology, Topics in English Life and Culture, and Global Health. Classes in a British school are much different from schools in America. They never have any homework, or projects, or exams, they have 2 grades for the semester- one midterm paper, and one finals paper. So, in three of my classes, where I have professors from the local universities around Cambridge,I never have any homework. In my global health class taught by my resident director who is from Valpo, all I have to do is read a chapter before class, and in TELC all I have to do is journal my experiences (As you can imagine, I love that class!) So what do I do with the rest of day when classes are over and we still have hours and hours left of daylight? I’ll tell you. We explore Cambridge, we go shopping, we pick up a crepe from the Crepe Cart in the City Centre, we work out. All these mundane things make up my life here, and in a way the memories of these days are just as significant as seeing Big Ben, or Edinburgh Castle. There is a lot of history here at Cambridge as well, and it’s so fun to just wander without a destination in mind and see what I can discover in Cambridge today. There is always something new to see, whether it be where they discovered Mercury, or where the remains of the castle is. As I mentioned earlier, there is a crepe cart at the City Centre and they make the most amazing crepes I’ve ever had. We have been there so often already they have given each of us a loyalty card and after so many crepes we get one free. Holla! There are crepes like Nutella and marshmallow or apple and cinnamon, or there are crepes like egg and bacon or ham and cheese. Whatever your heart desires! Since I’ve mentioned the City Centre a few times, maybe I should explain it. The house we live in is at the top of the only hill in Cambridge and if you walk down the hill towards the center of town, you stop seeing as many houses and you start seeing cafes, and restaurants, and clothing and shoe stores. And then after you cross the bridge, a little ways past, cars are not allowed in and that is where the City Centre is. It is full of every shop you can imagine, and it has 2 shopping malls. It has all sorts of restaurants and cafes, pubs and clubs, shops and stores. This is where we do our grocery shopping, at Sainsbury’s. But walking back up that hill to our house is not fun. Especially since we have to do it so often because the food here has less preservatives so we have to shop at least once a week or food goes bad. However, since last night we found an Aldi’s and it is much cheaper, we won’t have to walk up that hill anymore, praise the Lord! And at night, we watch an average of 2 movies before we go to bed so we can catch up on some British movies from over here. Those are my days in a nutshell, hope you enjoy reading!
With love,
Abby

The Cricket Clock

Edinburgh Castle

Edinburgh (pronounced Edinborough) is the capital of Scotland and the epitome of what I imagined Scotland to be. It was beautiful with rolling hills (that I did not appreciate when I was walking them all day) and incredible breathtaking views of the mountains on one side and the North Sea on the other. It is home to Edinburgh Castle which was built 1000 years ago, Scottish Whiskey, and cashmere (they had a cashmere store literally every other store; it was ridiculous!) It is also the birthplace of Harry Potter. It houses the Honour’s of Scotland which are the equivalent to the Crown Jewels of England, it is supposedly home to the most haunted place in the entire world, and Dolly the cloned sheep. All these things I experienced in just 3 days!

View from the top!

I had to wake up at 4:20 on Friday morning to finish packing and get ready to meet the 6:15 train to Edinburgh. Talk about an early start, and as many of you know, I am not a good morning person. Our train ride took a little over 5 hours and we didn’t even get lost at any of the switch overs to other trains. We’re getting used to this traveling thing! We decided to take a tour of the city when we got there and low and behold we found a tour… that was FREE. Now, being a poor college student studying abroad that I am, I was all for a free 3 hour tour of a beautiful, historical tour. So we met up with our group and our tour guide looked like a legitimate pirate, and he was awesome. We’ve been blessed with an abundance of great tour guides since we’ve arrived on this side of the Atlantic. We learned of the Stone of Destiny, and Mary Queen of Scots, and the history of Edinburgh Castle. We also learned the history of Scotland in just 5 minutes which starts over 320 billion years ago apparently but I figured I don’t have time for all that in my blog. (You’re welcome!) We went to the cafe where J.K.Rowling wrote her first two Harry Potter books, and saw where the Harry Potter world came to life. From the window where she sat each day to write, she could see a school, a castle, and a graveyard. All the necessary components to get Harry Potter started. In this graveyard were the names McGonagall and Riddle which she took and used in her books. Also in this graveyard lies the most haunted place in the world. Sir George McKenzie haunts the graveyard. He was a wicked man and he threw 1,200 men into a prison in the graveyard because of their faith, and 5 months later when they were released, only 280 were still alive. In 1996 a homeless man went into the McKenzie mausoleum to sleep and ended up falling through the floor onto McKenzie’s bones and from then on he has haunted the graveyard where the prison used to be that he threw all those men into. How fitting! hey no longer give tour there and it is permanently locked because there have been so many injuries, deaths and even a coma.
Something interesting that I noticed while I was over there was that the Scottish are a lot friendlier than the English people. We ere only there for 3 days but we met some really cool Scottish friends in those 3 days, and we have yet to make any friends here in Cambridge yet. It was strange to me. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Cambridge, but people in Scotland are friendlier! I’ll have more stories to come, keep reading!
With Love,
Abby

London. London. London. It is the most amazing city I have ever been to. It is just teeming in history and stories and mysteries. It is such an old city with a rich history. I couldn’t get enough of it. We arrived at King’s Cross Station (ahh!) at 8:30 in the morning. The very first thing we did was see Platform 9 and three quarters. All my Harry Potter fans out there are probably really excited. It is awesome, let me tell you. There is a half of a cart and Hedwig’s cage bolted to a brick wall so it looks like it is halfway through the wall and it is so cool! After that, we hopped on the Tube (the underground railway in London) and headed to our hostel to drop off our stuff for the day. When we got off the station we made our way to the streets and I was so excited because at this point we hadn’t actually SEEN London yet because we went straight underground after getting off the train. So we walk up the stairs and the first thing I see when we enter the streets is.. a McDonald’s. Typical! They’re everywhere. But London was beautiful. And so different! Our hostel was about 2 miles away from the heart of London and so we didn’t see any of the historical stuff but nevertheless, it was still amazing.And did you know that London is actually a combination of a few cities put together? Where all the historical building like Big Ben and Westminster Abbey are; that is the city of Westminster and on the other side is the city of London and that makes up the whole of London. Our hostel was also so cool, we slept on bunk beds that were triple stacked and there were 15 beds in one room. Very different from a regular hotel.
After that comes the fun stuff, we saw Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guards. My Dad and brother informed me that it is illegal to hug the queen unless she initiates the hug, so they implored me not to create an international incident by hugging her. Unfortunately I did not get the chance to hug the queen because she was not at home when we were there. We went to St. Jame’s Park, and then to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. By far, Big Ben was my absolute favorite thing I have seen. Nothing else comes close. It is truly magnificent. There is no other way to describe it and my pictures don’t do it justice. I strongly recommend for everyone to come to London, if for no other reason than to see Big Ben for yourself. It is so beautiful. Right next to Big Ben is Westminster Abbey which is also very incredible. We also saw the London eye; fourth largest observation wheel in the world! We were the epitome of a tourist when we stopped to take pictures with the iconic red phone booths with Big Ben in the background. We took a Big Bus Tour and I learned so much in the 2 hours we were on the bus. The tour guide was fantastic. The phrase “God Bless You” when someone sneezes came about when the bubonic plague was spreading through London and the final symptom before a person died was sneezing. So when someone would sneeze they said “God Bless You” to literally ask God to have mercy on their soul because very soon they would die. I learned that the oldest monument in the city is Cleopatra’s Needle; it is 3000 years old and it was a gift from the Egyptians. On it’s way over to London, it got lost in the mail… for 80 years! How crazy is that? The list goes on and on. We saw a play in Picadilly Circus and at night, Picadilly Circus resembles Time Square. It was so pretty.

Big Ben 🙂

We ended the weekend going to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. The Tower of London was awesome and the Crown Jewels were beautiful. There is a punch bowl in the collection called the Great Punch Bowl and it is made out of pure silver plated in 100% pure gold that weighs a half a ton and can hold 144 bottles of wine. It was massive. At one point, the Tower of London had been a castle, a prison, a fortress, a zoo, a royal home, and now a museum. It was fascinating. One of the most famous parts of the Tower are the 6 ravens that live within the grounds. There is a saying that goes, “If the Tower of London ravens are lost or fly away, the crown will fall and Britain with it” Now, the people of England are very superstitious, so to be on the safe side, they’ve clipped the ravens wings and there is a 7th spare raven in case something happens to one of the other six. They are very tame creatures, I even got close enough to one to get my picture with it!

The Raven!

We learned of Anne Boleyn one of the 3 queens who were beheaded at the Tower. We then ended with a Harry Potter Tour of the city to see where they filmed some of the movies. Sorry this is so lengthy, but I couldn’t POSSIBLY fit this in one or 2 paragraphs. It was on of the best weekends of my life, and I hope to return to London soon. Thanks for reading!
With love,
Abby

The River Cam!

We’ve finally made it! We flew into Heathrow around 7:50 am.The flight was pretty cramped but I had a window seat which make everything better. The lights of Chicago were beautiful at night when we lifted off and flying over the rest of the States was amazing. An hour before we landed we flew over Ireland and the lights of Dublin were the most beautiful thing. And then we reached London, it was one of the most exhilarating, exciting, nervous feelings I’ve ever had. Honestly, one of he best moments of my life, when we were circling over London getting ready to land. I felt so blessed and so lucky to have this chance! We got off the plane and make it through customs and immigrations and we all found our luggage (thank God) and left the airport on a coach bus. Our bus driver was Brian and he was the first British accent we actually encountered since being in the UK. He was awesome. We left the airport around 9 and made it to Cambridge by 11. Nola let us unpack and then we headed straight to the city centre to learn our way around. Now, by this time it had been about 32 hours since any of us had slept, and we were all exhausted. But we walked around for a good 2 HOURS and at 4:30 we went to dinner at our first pub, the Eagle. The atmosphere was so cool and the food was amazing. (The beer wasn’t too bad either!) I had fish and chips and an ale called Eagles DNA. The Eagle incidentally is where Watson and Crick sat when they announced that they had discovered DNA. Nola then left us and made us find our own way home, while also making a stop at the local grocery store. It was definitely and adventure! The entire day was fun filled and amazing, yet one of the most exhausting days of my life. Definitely not a day that I will ever forget. Lots more stories to come!
With love,
Abby

We had to pass through security (obviously) to get on the plane and I was used to the drill. Take off all metal, belt, jewelry, shoes, etc. Take off jackets, purse, carry on, put them all in separate bins, take out computer, put it in a separate bin from everything else. Well, I did all that and I was expecting to go through the walkway with no difficulty, but low and behold, I went through and it beeped.

About to go through Security

The guy told me that I had to stand aside and wait for someone to come get me because I had been selected for a random screening of sort or the other, they wouldn’t tell me what it was for. I figured this was code for I had something suspicious with me. So some guy came and took me to some secluded spot of the security area and I was getting anxious. He took my hands and swiped something across them and stuck it in a machine… and I still had my hands held out. He looked at me and said “Uhh, you can put your hands down now.” Woops. Well apparently he was screening for residue of bomb explosives! It scared me half to death! More stories to come.
With love,
Abby

Waiting to board