Studying Abroad: 3 Month Update

How is it possible that it's April?  That by the end of this month I will be back in the USA?  That's absolutely crazy to me!

If you're new here and want to read about the other two months I've been in London, you can read about Month 1 here and Month 2 here!

The beginning of March was spent in Dublin, Ireland which you can read all about here!

Saturday, March 10th was spent doing homework, but I did get outside on Sunday, March 11th.  I decided to go souvenir shopping for some family and friends, which I will have to wait to tell you about in case some of them are reading.

Saturday, March 17th was another homework day, but I did get the chance to go out with some friends at night.  We wanted to go to an Irish Pub, but because it was St. Patrick's Day the lines were out the door and around the corner so we ended up at BrewDog, but we still had a lot of fun.

On Sunday, March 18th I met up with some friends I met when I went to Berlin last month and watched the parade.  The London St. Patrick's Day parade was not like the parades I've seen back home: no one was cheering or clapping or jumping around.  Naturally, the girl I was with and I were doing these things and it resulted in someone next to us asking where we were from.  When we said America he said, "Yeah I figure."  He was Canadian though so he also realized that this parade was a little lacking.  The rest of the day was spent in a bar with a musician taking requests.  We were responsible for some Britney Spears and Stacey's Mom being played.

Friday, March 23rd was the last day of my internship, which I was very sad to walk away from.  I had such a blast being a Publicity Intern at Simon & Schuster UK.  The people were amazing and I learned a lot about the publishing world.  The fact that it ended also reminded me that my time here in London is almost over.  My best friend, who is studying in Italy, was in London too so we were able to get dinner and hang out for a couple hours.  It was great to see her and made me excited for all of my friends to be home over the summer.

Saturday and Sunday I was in Nice, France with my roommate which you can read about here!



Since I no longer have to go to my internship, a friend and I were going to have a Charles Dickens Day on Monday, March 26th, but the Dickens Museum isn't open on Mondays so we ended up rescheduling that and going to Harrods to get lunch and cake instead.  On our way there we also stopped inside a bookstore, which we said would result in no book buying.  But then we started talking to a sales associate and both ended up buying a book.

Thursday, March 29 was really exciting because I met up with a friend I haven't seen since Junior Year of High School.  She was a foreign exchange student and now she's studing in England.  She has some time off so she came down to London and we saw Wicked, which was amazing!  I had chills throughout the entire thing.

Friday we took a bus to Brighton for the day.  We then took another bus to the Seven Sisters and walked around there.  However, it was raining and cold, so we ended being absolutely soaked and pretty miserable.  But we made the most of it and still had a good day.

Saturday, March 31 we slept in and then headed to Chinatown for some food before my friend had to leave.  We actually had to wait until noon for the place we wanted to eat lunch to open so we got ice cream at about 11:30am.  It was great.

Only a few weeks left for me here in London.  I look forward sharing with you what I get up to during that time...

Studying Abroad: 2 Month Update

Hello everybody!

February was an absolutely crazy time for me that flew by.  I was able to do a lot of traveling, and my brother came to visit me!  It's hard to believe that I have been in London for a full two months now.  If you haven't read about my first month and would like to click here!

I got to visit Windsor Castle on Saturday, February 3rd, which was beautiful.  It's also where the Royal Wedding is going to take place in May, so I was really excited to get to see where it was all going to be.  Plus, when I'm home and watching the wedding on TV I can say 'I've been there!' approximately 90 times.

On Sunday, February 4th I went to a place called Student Central and watched The Super Bowl!  Unfortunately, I had to stay awake until 4 in the morning only to watch the Patriots lose, but my friend is from Philidelphia, so I guess it was nice to see her excited.  Gotta love a good underdog story.  However, the next day I found the closest Dunkin' Donuts to help with my grief.  Thank goodness they have some here.

The next weekend I traveled to Berlin, Germany.  I already wrote a blog post about this so you can read all about it here.  Both the Windsor Castle and Berlin trips were excursions organized by my study abroad program that I signed up for all the way back in November.

Two days after I got back to London, my brother arrived for a visit over my school break.  Again, I already wrote about this so check it out here.  

The day my brother left, Thursday, February 22nd, I went to a The Vamps concert in Camden.  It was part of BritWeek and proceeds went to an organization called WarChild.  I was really excited to go because I love The Vamps music and the tickets were inexpensive.  Unfortunately, they only played about 9 songs, but at the same time, it was nice because I had to be up early the next morning to get to my internship.  I was also blocked by a photographer for a couple of songs, so he gave me his business card with his email and sent me this photo.  How great is that?  A photographer can block me at any concert if this is the outcome.

Tuesday, February 27th was my roommate's 21st birthday, and so we went to a bar called Ballie Ballerson which is a bar with a giant ball pit!  It was so fun to play in a ball pit for about an hour!

As amazing as the night was, it seemed the universe needed me to have some balance because the morning of February 28th was quite the trip.  There is snow in London, which is apparently not normal because it only snowed about 2 inches and yet everything was crazy.  I almost slipped numerous times on the way to the train station and then when I was crossing the street a bus started coming towards me, and I panicked for half a second.  On the train, after a stop, the doors closed and I immediately felt that my hair was stuck in between them.  Everything was fine, I was able to tug it out, but the fear of being scalped was there for a second.  Once off the train a friend and I stopped at Starbucks.  I got a hot chocolate and as we were walking to school I slipped a little in the snow, but I was so happy I didn't spill any of my drink on me.  However, I did manage to get it all over the sleeve of my friend.  We stood on the side of the sidewalk for a good 3 minutes wiping it off with napkins and laughing.  A woman walked by and said, "Oh no" which just made the situation that much funnier.  All of this happened between 8:00 and 9:00am.  Craziness.

Other than all those fun days, February was full of school and internship.  I've also started to get emails from my school back home talking about next semester which is mind-boggling to think that it's time to start thinking about my senior year of college!