The Real Thanksgiving

And now, after a lengthy intermission, Part II:

The Boyfriend and I returned to Lancaster, tired from traveling and carrying around eighty pounds of Christmas presents on our backs, and made the executive decision to do nothing of great importance for the remainder of his visit.

Me: So...
Boyfriend: So...?
Me: ...Wanna watch 30 Rock all day and eat junk food?
Boyfriend: jumping up and grabbing Cheetos, Goldfish (pizza blasted), plethora of assorted candybars.  Let's do this.

And thus began the 30 Rock marathon, though I think he got annoyed at me for quoting every single line because I've watched all five seasons at least four or five times.

The next day we had terrible rain.  Rain that I had never witnessed in England; and despite the common myth that it rains here all the time, which is partially true, but it does not rain consecutively like it would back in Ohio, just obnoxiously on and off.  But that day, it was a cold downpour, and because we're awesome, we decided to go on a walk to the amazing sheep fields.

Unfortunately, I did not bring my precious camera on this adventure, but Boyfriend brought his SLR and took some beautiful pictures and I'm sure some of you will recognize the stone wall from previous entries.

"If we take nine pictures in a row, we can't mess up!"

That night, the rain stopped and I took Boyfriend to one of my favorite pubs in town named The Borough.  It was my first pub I went to in Lancaster, with my friend Caitlin.

Also note that the Christmas lights have been up since early November...Not right.

Sunday was Real Thanksgiving and thus we made drunk chicken with Mr. E's recipe (by "we" I mean Boyfriend):

Naturally, we used Stella Artois as the beer can

Yes the chicken is in a sauce pan, it is college cooking after all

And on Monday morning, I shipped Boyfriend off on the next train to Manchester (which he would proceed to trip over his luggage and pull the train alarm) and I found myself with only two weeks left in England!

Cheers!

A Gentleman's Intermission

First and most importantly, Lydia's birthday was YESTERDAY and she is now 21.  I'm sad I couldn't celebrate with her, but excited to have our ladies night back in session this Spring Semester so we can at least have a belated birthday celebration, probably in a really small, danky room in the basement of the crappiest dorms on campus.  Also, her new tattoo is amazing.

Secondly, this is not Part II, not because I'm being cheeky, but because a certain someone (BOYFRIEND) hasn't updated his blog OR sent me pictures, ahem, ahem.  Here are some so nobody gets their knickers in a twist:

Interpretive posing at the James Joyce Center (and yes, my shirt has owls on it, from Primark!!)

Boyfriend taking some really cool pictures of Dublin at the Gravity Bar, Guinness Factory

Boyfriend and River Liffey before we did our 2 and a half hour walk

Third: because I have four papers due by the time I leave, I reserve the right to be cranky at/with everything.  Such as:

1. Look, it's 3 AM.  There's no need to be shouting in Chinese at whatever or whoever in your room across the hall.
2. There are three girls in this flat and two boys.  Put the dang seat down.  (I'm looking at you, Greek boy).
3. I did NOT pay money to sit on this bus or train to listen to your crappy mix of Rihanna and techno music.  Why do you even have earphones if you insist on playing it so loud that the entire carriage can hear?
4. And to the ten Occupy Lancastrians in town square: go home.  Just go.
5. To the empty aluminum can rattling outside every time there is a gust of wind: STOP IT.
6. Also, everyone should walk faster than me so I don't have to slow down my pace.  Thanks.

Oh, God.  I've become an old person.



(Cheers!)

Thanksgiving: Several Hours in a Lobby Eating Fruit Rollups (aka Winning)

Okay, no more teapot posts, however, as a quick preface...  I'd like to inform my dear readers that I just made the purchase of black currant, ginseng and vanilla tea.  Not that you all care.

I pick Boyfriend up from our wee Lancaster train station midday, just in time to drop him off at my flat so I could go to my British Romanticism class, where my old British professor challenged my third-wave feminist attitudes on writing. HAH, picked the wrong girl for that!

I race back to the flat, Boyfriend had insisted we fly to Ireland the same day he arrived ("Oh, might as well get all the flying out of the way, even though you are probably one hundred percent right about flying the next day, but whatever!"  Okay, fine he didn't say the last part), so we had a small window of time to catch a train in order to check in for the flight.

Needless to say, there was a lot of running through the airport, and me saying, "Hey, we should totally sign up for the Amazing Race!" and immediately retracting that statement after sprinting up a flight of stairs.
As you can imagine, because it is my life, we missed the flight.  And all the hotels were booked... Except Travel Lodge: the cheapest, ugliest looking accommodation we've ever seen.

At the crack of dawn on Wednesday, we awake, and get on the 8 AM flight to Ireland!

"You both look so happy!" Happy, mom, yes, we are happy.  Also delirious from sleep exhaustion and just relieved we managed to not screw up this flight

Dublin Town Center: you can also see the Spire Monument in this picture (the giant spike)

Dublin was a pretty cool city.  We did a lot of shopping and I even got to author-stalk James Joyce!  Boyfriend humored me and got me a few trinkets from the James Joyce Center!  I think Larry Stewart and Mazen Naous from the COW would applaud me.

That night, we walked to the Guinness Factory, where Boyfriend took some excellent pictures from the Gravity bar after we had our free pints of Ireland's greatest beer.  Afterwards, we stayed out fairly late (I know his post says 3 AM, but we were definitely in bed by eleven...latest) taking pictures of the lit up city and eating Irish McDonald's chicken nuggets on the bench overlooking River Liffey.

Boyfriend in Merchant's Arch

Photographer in action

And what good would one of my stories be if yet another thing didn't go wrong?

Stupid Dublin ATMs ate my money and left me with 20 worthless American dollars.  So the next morning, I had to call AAA back in America to sort it all out (I was surprised Mom hadn't all made them want to quit their jobs by then).  Boyfriend and I, completely exhausted from running around Dublin, decided to head back to Lancaster.  But first, we needed to get to the ferry.

Boyfriend: "Oh, it's no problem, my super awesome iPhone says that it's just past the river by the Dublin Docks.  We can walk that.  My iPhone hasn't been wrong about anything either."

So I prepared myself for a very long journey:

Yes, I am a dork, thanks for noticing.  And yes, water does come in that ridiculously sized bottle here.

US TWO HOURS LATER

"Boyfriend, we're idiots."

"Yup."

 Oh, and our backpacks weighed like thirty pounds from our Christmas shopping (yes, families, we love you just that much).  We finally made it and then proceeded to spend approximately six hours in the lobby of the ferry waiting room, and mind you, this was on Real Thanksgiving.  But that's okay, because it was pretty hysterical and we were too thrilled to have found the ferry to care.  Also, I made him play ISpy with me as well as micro-manage his game of Solitaire.

But we made it onto the ferry, and the stormy sea made us both a bit motion sick.

Spirits still high despite wanting to throw up

At midnight, we were in Holyhead, Northern Wales!  I've never been to Wales, and even at night it was absolutely beautiful.  I'd live there if it had a Chipotle and didn't have such chilled winds.

I believe this was our favorite part: Holyhead.  It was beyond any beautiful words:

Boyfriend photobombing my lovely picture

Sooner or later, we found ourselves back in Lancaster!  Which everyone will have to wait for that post, so there.

Cheers!

And Then, Everything that Went Wrong, Did, but it All Had a Happy Ending (So Far)

Once upon a time, there was an unfortunate girl who had the very fortunate experience of traveling to the UK.  This girl, usually organized under most conditions, found herself to be particularly flighty under these stressful circumstances.

Let me begin with the Flight from Hell.  Okay, so it wasn't that bad but the almost-but-not-really sinus infection I accumulated two days prior to adventuring to London didn't fair well on the acceding and descending flights.  By the time I arrived at Toronto, I was too sick and confused to know right from left and the Canadians I surely thought to be friendly were the most unhelpful bunch of tourist-craved nimrods I'd ever come across.  I was so stressed out that I managed to realize I was no longer carrying my coat.  Yes, I lost my beloved AE coat.

London was far worse.  By then, my ears were so pressurized it felt like someone had released me into Outer Space with no fish bowl full of air over my head.  I thought I was going to implode.  I sucked it up, found the Arcadia group at the airport, and we headed to the hotel.

The next few days were a high-speed flash of various tourist activities through the eyes of the aforementioned unfortunate girl who was drugged on Sudafed the entire time.  But, I had a blast (see examples below):

The view from my hotel window (Kensington Gardens)

 

 

My first ever Guinness (I was unable to hear the whole night so I kept shouting at people to speak up)

And then, I won.  Won what, you ask?  I won Rachel.  That's right, I found Rachel! 

Don't worry, it's still the first Guinness and Rachel's first apple juice

 After the first night of the Arcadia orientation (majority Oxford students, one going to York, and three of us off to Lancaster), I put on the puppy-eyes and begged for a doctor.  After two hours of getting lost in West London (quite frightening when you don't know where you are going and have to pretend that you aren't lost), I finally got to see the doctor.  After an interesting appointment with Dr. Stereotypical Old British Man, I got my meds and was good to go.

As an English major, I fulfilled my life duty by traveling to the Globe and seeing a play preformed called Mysteries.  It was an amazing experience, being a groundling and all.  It was everything that Maria Teresa Prendergast had drilled into my head back at Wooster.

We received flowers because we are so beautifully awesome

Introducing the then-future students of Oxford...And me.

After a three hour train ride in which I realized I left my wallet at the hotel, I finally got to Lancaster!  But that's a different story, one that is still working on an ending.

Cheers!