And Then There Were None

And in a blink of an eye my suitcase went from 0 lbs to 37 lbs to 49 lbs.

I JUST finished putting up everything on my board too!

lamelamelamelamelame

I'm leaving tomorrow.

5:45 AM: Get my sorry butt out of bed
6:30 AM: Turn in keys to the porter
7:00 AM: Meet Caitlin to grab a taxi and head to the station
7:38 AM: Train to London Euston
10:12 AM: Arrive in London
15:25 PM: Plane to Chicago
18:41 PM: Arrive in America!
9:49 PM: Plane from Chicago to Columbus, Ohio
23:57 PM: Arrive home

Basically, tomorrow is going to be hell.  It'll be worth it though.

Today was my last trip into town.  I was not a fan of the Christmas rush in the least.  I also turned in my final paper today.  You know, I thought that if I wrote a paper about Sense and Sensibility, I'd like it more.  It turns out, that isn't true.

I still can't fathom the idea of leaving England behind tomorrow.  All of my friends are going through the same denial-process too.  Both Lydia and Kate leave very soon.  I feel like just yesterday I was sweating bullets, tossing steaming mulch on the campus grounds, then stir-crazy at home for two months, then just arriving at oddly sunny London, sick as a dog.

I have to say, I'm so excited to be back in farmland Ohio, potentially the least exciting of our states, only beating out the Dakotas and Wyoming.  And I'm thrilled to go back to The College of Wooster next semester.  Junior IS will be wonderful.  I miss working hard, thinking, learning, and being challenged.  Also, I am so so so excited to live with Kate in a small, danky, disgusting little room meant for Freshmen (that is, if ResLife is nice to us and puts us together).  I can't wait to hear about all of my friends' travels.  It will be fantastic.

So, how can I be sad to leave when I have SO much to look forward to? : )

I hope everyone has enjoyed following the blog!  Thanks for keeping up with me!

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!

The Saga of Locating Jane Austen's House: Part II

And everyone thought I was going to post about Ireland, but HAH!  I'm just like a bad TV show on the CW, you all will just have to wait.

Waking up in London is possibly the greatest feeling I've had.  The first few seconds pertain to you realizing you are in a hostel bed that resembles a sleeping pod from some cheesy sci-fi film, but the seconds following it are more like: "Wow, I'm in London, England."

Neither of us had much confidence in this adventure to Jane's house, especially after getting to the train station and figuring out that to get to Alton (where her house is), it is an hour and a half train ride.  But we get to Alton.  Oh boy, do we get to Alton.

Reads: "A family lives here, please don't break our windows" Alton made me feel like I was going to get mugged at any second.

Oh, yeah, I was totally going to go into the sketchy alleyway with the murderous looking garage, thanks for the sign, dude!

Yes, we passed these things, and yes, we were terrified.  Halfway through the town, we were guilted into having lunch at a restaurant that resembled my Great Aunt Jo's condo in Florida.  Full of trinkets, cat figurines, and pictures of old ladies.  However, we did get directions to the real house.

Directions that led us down a sidewalkless highway:

Just in case I wasn't going to be shot in Alton, I can now become roadkill on the highway!

Cars and motorbikes zoomed past us at sixty mph, but we were determined.  Finally, we get to Chawton, the ACTUAL town that her house is in.  A beautiful, southern England town that was what I had exactly pictured this county to look like.  Thatched roofs, cobblestone streets, perfectly trimmed hedges, and horse farms with horses wearing adorable blankets.

Totally worth the eight near death experiences, now everyone be jealous please

The house was amazing.  It was worth all of the trials and tribulations.  I saw her writing desk where she edited Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abby, and Sense and Sensibility, and she lived in this house with her sister and mother towards the end of her life.  I also was able to see all of the costumes that the actors wore in the film renditions of most all of the movies!

Afterwards, we went down we went to go see the church she and her mother and sister went to, and it is were Mrs. Austen and Jane's sister is buried (Jane's tomb is in Winchester and was not buried with her mother and sister at this church unfortunately).

This is the giant house that the Austen women often went to visit a family friend.  It was bought and filled with historical furniture but was closed during this hour of the day.

Uh, Jane Austen went here, NO BIG DEAL

Cassandra (Jane's sister) and Mrs. Austen's graves

Completely satisfied with our author-stalking, we ended up home around ten or eleven.  It was one of those trips were it's "all about the story" (as some of my other Wooster friends have already figured out), but it ended up to be in my top three adventures.

When I got home, it was Sunday, and The Boyfriend was coming on Tuesday, so now that I'm all caught up I suppose I can write about our Ireland trip.

...Or my awesome new teapot I bought for seven pounds (yeah, I can write a whole blog post about that).

Just kidding.

Cheers!

The Common Sense Journey Back to Childhood

One of my favorite books growing up was "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" by Beatrix Potter.  I had no idea, until Allison informed me, that her museum was approximately thirty eight miles away from this University!  With nothing to do for Thursday (except homework that wouldn't be due in four days time anyway), I was going to do it.  I was going to go on the train.  Solo.

I took the bus to town and found the rail station by reading the signs.  Who said traveling was difficult?  (Maybe no one said that..)

English towns just got quainter...can you handle it?

This is Windermere.  I had to change trains at Oxenholme to travel further into the Lake District.  I took this picture about five minutes of walking distance away from the rail station.  I don't know anything about this town other than it's apart of the Lake District and holds the Beatrix Potter World.  But I've got this amazing super power that I used earlier to find the Lancaster station.  Common sense.

I had no idea where to go, but the town had a lake.  Obviously, I should go downhill.  And so I did.  Guess what I found?
Wait for it....

If you answered "a lake" you are absolutely correct!  I found the lake!  And then applying the knowledge of what I knew from Mrs. Potter's books and background, her museum wasn't far.

The museum was incredibly well done and paid a proper tribute to one of the greatest children's authors in history.

Beatrix Potter and Her Animal Characters

A Beautiful Recreation of Mr. McGregor's Garden

My Favorite Little Trouble Maker

It was a good day.

This weekend is also the Lancaster Literature Festival (another reason why this was my primary choice for a study abroad school) and a shopping trip in which I will try to look less like an American (probably not going to happen).  I'm so excited about future travels about England now that my first small journey has been successful and not emotionally scarring.

Cheers!