Wave Me Hello!

I'm finally home. Hurray. When traveling back, it really felt as though I would never make it. But I did. Yes.

My Air India flight actually totally rocked this time -- it always helps when it isn't a night flight and you have an empty buffer seat between you and other people. Plus, I had a window. The guy I sat 'next to' was named Omar, and he's British but have lived in New York City for 12 or so years. He was SO nice, and we talked all about the West Coast (which, thanks to my suggestions, he thinks he might go live there -- either San Diego or Seattle -- for a few months) and also about all the ways to find cheap places to live in NYC. He basically convinced me that bartending would be the best job. I think I might actually take a class, because, as he puts it, "If you're a great bartender in the city, you can make hundreds of dollars a night -- and that is at the upscale places. Everyone would want to hire you." So... that's cool.

But I digress. The flight was great. No worries at all, and it was a relief.

Getting to New York hurt my brain. TOOOOO hot. Not used to the humidity, 'cause England was just so not humid or hot.

My JetBlue flight sucked. Some stupid bitch and her retarded husband confined me to my row, and she kept looking over at me like I was crazy. I was so tired, I tried to pass out, but the bitch was reading a book (OK, I'll give her credit, she read the ENTIRE THING on the flight) and kept her light on. I can't sleep with light, 'cause I hate it, so it was tough. I thought I'd have to be carried off the plane, I was so exhausted.

Thanks to Mom and Dad and Shannon for meeting me at the airport, and apologies for being so incoherent. Sleep was all I needed.

Well. This is it. How sad. I don't know what I'm going to write about now. I guess non-important things. I will probably be writing one more big ENGLAND post, all about what I've learned from traveling and things. But it'll take me a while, 'cause I want it to be right.

Good to be home. Thanks everyone for reading all this time. =)

One final picture, 'cause it sums up my thoughts on traveling.

Not Just Another College Town

While waiting with baited breath to leave my humble room to hunt down some Indian cuisine for dinner, I figured I'd update with what will probably be my last picture post of my time here at King's.

On Friday, the official 'final' day of the program, I went with Mike (of 'the Carlins') to check out several things around town that I had yet to see. Amazing that I'd been here for 8 weeks and still hadn't made my way to certain places.

I started off, actually, having coffee with Abby at Indigo Cafe -- the most popular little cafe for all the King's kids, which is right down a little alleyway across the street. Had never gone, though I'd heard nothing but good things. It's possibly the quaintest, most awesome little cafe, and I can see myself having spent every morning of this programme having coffee/bagel sandwiches there with Carlin. Not to downplay the amazingness that was our time at Starbucks/Borders, but Indigo would have been perhaps a little better.

It was so great in fact, I went there this morning, alone, and had my first official English tea (with a little personal pot and everything), along with a remarkable baguette sandwich (I'll miss those in the States). How lame I am for never having had real tea before today.

I'm actually not going to post too many pics. There are tons. And tons and tons. So I'll include some Wiki-links if you want to know anything more. (This is gonna be boring and not detailed.)

First stop was Queen's College, right next to King's. I'd been there a lot, actually, 'cause I had a section for Drama there. It has some of the oldest buildings in all of Cambridge. ==>

<== Then it was off to Corpus Christi College, which is located basically right across the street from Queen's, and in between King's and Pembroke.

Finally, off to Trinity College, which was.... very grand. Not like King's. Our lawn is way nicer. But the courtyard was ginormous! The grounds were certainly bigger than ours, and you can tell that that's where all the rich kids go. Stupid Henry VIII. ==>

We sneaked out through the back of Trinity in order to try and get into St. John's College. It was interesting, 'cause you're supposed to pay to get in to each of the colleges if you're a visitor. I'm proud to say that we didn't pay to go into a single one.

St. John's presented itself as a challenge, and Mike and I were up for it. We walked all around this enormous lawn and found a little open gate way off to the side, on the other side of the river, and we high-tailed it around and walked right into St. John's. It was definitely worth the effort.

<== As I stated a while back in one of my punting videos, the back entrance to St. John's looks like a giant vagina. Nice change from all the big phalli all over the damn place.

Also, walking through the Bridge of Sighs was pretty frickin' cool. A little starstruck, not gonna lie. ==>

In leaving St. John's, we ran into some fellow PKP-ers were heading to something called Castle Mount -- this hill (one of Cambridge's only) that once had a little castle on it. Sounded good to us, so we followed suit.

It was pretty cool getting to see Cambridge from above. It is one beautiful city.

<== And can you see King's the background?!? We also explored Sidney Sussex College, which is nearer to the market area, but I didn't get any pictures. We were searching (unsuccessfully) for a bathroom.

That night, I went out with a large group of people to The Regal (cheap drinks, good music), I got kind of drunk, I ran across the front and back lawn in the dense fog (as I described in my video I posted yesterday) and it was exhilarating in way I could never really describe.

Perfect last night. Now I'm ready to get the hell out of here.

See the rest of the photos from my college excursion HERE.

Wine, Cheese and Bread Party: Final Edition

I'm sitting at my desk right now with a bottle of Chilean Cab/Merlot, some Boursin cheese and a loaf of bread. These three things are my favorite foods I've had while being here (minus my new favorite Indian dish, chicken bhuna -- yumm!). Except now, instead of enjoying it with Carlin, Sean, Dean and Mark while watching 1940's British war films, I'm doing it alone. For the last time in England. =/ That's kind of sad. It's all as a present to myself while having to pack. (Guys... I have over 13 books to cram into my suitcase... I think I might kill myself.)

I love wine so much, I think someone should be worried. I've had more wine during the last 10 weeks than I could possible count, and while I have kept all the corks, twist-off caps are possible here. I did not keep the twist-off caps. They wouldn't fit in my suitcase. I know that I'm supposed to have grown an attachment to beer (and I have found some amazing beer, such as Kronenberg and Carling, my new loves), but honestly, it has been all about the wine here. Possibly because we get so much of it for free during any and all King's events. I love this school.

Today is an absolutely gorgeous day. Frightening, actually, that on the absolute final day of the programme, as the majority of people are leaving, there are no clouds in the sky, the air is painfully hot, and Cambridge is at its most active. Well, I get to enjoy it at least.

Even though I'm sad that I can't leave to go home sooner, getting to relax here for another day will be fantastic. Not like when I came early, and knew nothing about anything. I'm only sad that no one is around to go to a pub with me. Maybe I can hunt down a TA or something.

I have a few videos for you. Nothing special, just a look around my area of Cambridge and King's. Even though you've seen pictures, they don't always do things justice. So enjoy them.

Boring, I know. But whatever.

The Last Hoorah

The last formal hall was an interesting event. After 4 previous ones, Carlin and I made a promise that we were going to talk to/hang out with/experience our friends that we just hadn't spent enough time with. More importantly -- after all the drama, all the craziness, all the frustration -- we were going to enjoy ourselves.

And by God, we did. I love these people so much.

Mark and I -- prom style! .... Jon, our amazingly breathtaking Brit Brit TA who pretty much ran the show (all the girls loved him, hehe)


Howie (the funniest mo'f on planet earth), the Carlins, and me .... Sean, my favoritest =)


Spencer, Katrina and Megan (I'll miss them!) .... Abby and I -- she and I should have hung out about a thousand times more, ::sniff::, because I love her!


Bri and Cherie ... me and my girl, JennyRae (yay Santa Barbara!)


Dave Scales, everyone's favorite comedian, and the one whom everyone has claimed they would take home with them .... me and my PKP best friend from, literally, day one (who's slightly flashing us)

Will I miss England? No, not really. But I will miss Cambridge and these people. Luckily, most of us are going back to the same state. Except Marshall (not pictured), ::sniff::... stupid Yale student who grew up in Manhattan (92nd and Broadway, can you imagine??).

After the formal dinner, we listened to Spencer and Howie's band, Grover's Cleveland, play (which was fun[ny]), and then danced to some jazz. More dancing ensued in the Cellar, and once it all closed down it was one last trip to the Trailer of Life (or, as Carlin calls it, "the Trailer of Fat Thighs") for burgers.

Stayed up all night with Carlin, who had to leave for the bus station at 5am, talking about the programme and all the people we're gonna miss and all the things we'll have to do when we get back.

A fantastic night, a fantastic full-circle ending.

More videos and pictures to come.

The Walk

For Dad.

Sorry. The video cut out. And apologies for my horrible appearance. It was 9am and my coffee spilled.

Love you!

The Lost Picture Post: It's a Formal Thing!

This film paper is kicking my ass, mainly 'cause my brain is telling me that it's so easy, I shouldn't worry about it. Yeah. It's only due in 9 hours. That's SO MUCH TIME! So blogging it is. (I'll get to the paper, don't you worry 'bout me...)

Tonight is our last formal hall, and I'm excited/sad/anxious about it. It's the very last time we'll all be together, and if I've gotten anything out of the program, it's the people. Some more than others. And others that I wish I hadn't spent so much time with. And some I'm only now realizing would have made my time here even BETTER than it was, which is hard to imagine, but there ya go.

<== that's Oliver and us girls. He's our sexy Australian writer extraordinaire! I'll be taking massive amounts of pictures tonight, of everyone that I haven't yet photographed. I'm actually bringing my camera tonight, which I never do. I usually just steal other people's pictures, like I did in this post, and I've collected more, so I'm posting some here for you to see...

Bri and I, and also our shoes we got in Bath. We're in love with these shoes. LOVE. And also, could I look any more like my father?!? Look at my left eye!! Dad, I'll strangle you for passing me your heavy eye-lid genes...


Carlin and I with our boys: Sean, who is one of our 2 fellow film screening wine drinkers (Dean was nowhere to be found), and then Spencer and Marshall, who kept us laughing and entertained on our long bus ride to and from Edinburgh. We want to somehow see Atonement when it comes out with these kids. They know why.

Hm... guess I don't have as many pictures as I thought I did. There are more picture posts to come, so stay tuned.

Unluck o' the Irish

This is several days past due, and for that, I apologize. I feel as though there is so much to do now that there are only 2 days left of school, and I'll only be in England for about 5 more. Gotta get crackin' on stuff -- mostly my final paper for film. Is it wrong that I just don't care?

This last weekend. Dublin, Ireland. OK.

People in Ireland are probably some of the nicest people I've ever met. Generally speaking, they love Americans, and Americans love them. At least, this is what they loved to tell us.

Carlin and I went with a large group of people (ending up being about 11 of us total), and I'll just say that traveling in large groups is a bad idea. Especially when not everyone has a phone. Dublin isn't a very large city -- on the contrary, it's remarkably small -- but finding people is damn near impossible. That being said, we managed pretty well.

We stayed with our friends, Dan and Austin, at a hotel near the airport. About a 20 minute bus right from the center of the city. A hastle, but what can ya do? Other people stayed at this great hostel in the center of town, right near the Abbey Theatre (which I accidentally stumbled across when heading in that direction -- kind of freaked out, and LOOK! they're doing Woman and Scarecrow by Marina Carr, who, if you remember, came to UCSB when we did By the Bog of Cats and read about half of that play! So good...), and we ended up hanging out at the hostel, drinking a lot, because you can't drink in the streets.

Dublin is the most expensive city I've been to while traveling. It's on the Euro, which should be cheaper, but even compared to Paris it was insanely expensive. I felt like I ran out of money almost instantly. And there weren't any Barclays around, so the conversion rate must have killed me.

Not much happened in Dublin. A few really great moments, surrounded mostly by spending too much money, drinking, losing members of the group, drinking, drama, more drinking, and very cheap food (aka. Burger King and McDonald's -- they LOVE that stuff over here, what is wrong with them?!).

One of the great 'sites' we experienced was the Guinness Factory. First off, the building was totally amazing. I don't think you can go to Dublin and not pay to see this factory. If ever there was a cooler self-guided tour, I can't imagine it.

I don't like Guinness. I'll just put that out there right now. In the States, I think it tastes like heavy, muddy water. OK, that isn't really true, but I'm simply not a fan of super hoppy beer. However, when I tasted the beer from the factory... O. M. G. Though it was still really heavy (too much for me to drink all of it), it was so crisp and refreshing! Who'd have known? I was happy about that. I drank my pint for you, Dad, as you requested. =)

And also: I want to make a barrel. New life goal: make a barrel. Don't even ask me why -- if you saw the barrel-making video at the GF, you'd understand completely. Unquestionably the highlight of that tour. I even bought a Guinness barrel keychain, that's how cool.

On the Sunday we left, the girls hung around and took a bus tour around the city. Normally I hate that sort of thing, but this was actually really cool! We could get off at any stop and get back on the next bus -- which came every 10 minutes or so. All the sites, such as Trinity College, Oscar Wilde's statue/house, the factory, Temple Bar -- you name it, the bus went by it.

Oh. Except for anything related to James Joyce. That's what was weird. Everywhere you go in Dublin, there is some reference to Joyce. But on this tour, his name wasn't mentioned once. Isn't that odd?? I'm not sure what that was about.

I also ran out of batteries in my camera and refused to buy more. No more pictures, sorry. I'll have to steal them from someone else.

In the end (I'm keeping this short and completely free of details) Carlin and I had plane drama, we now want to sue RyanAir (yes, that's right, we're true Americans), we've realized how much we love great, cheap airlines like JetBlue, we wound up paying €75 to get on another flight since we missed our check-in (their fault) and didn't make it home until 1am, and I had two finals starting at 9:30am, neither of which I did a second of studying for.

Yeah. It was annoying. Had we not had a terrible travel time home, I might not be a little bitter at Dublin.

Don't worry, Dublin. I still love you, and Irish people are still really nice (unless they work for RyanAir), and I will come back someday when I have money. Or rather, I'll be going to Dingle, like Kait and Adam suggest, and I'll probably stay away from you for a while. No offense.

Peace.

Sprinkle Sprinkle Sprinkle

Sorry for the lack of postage. It's been difficult to organize what to post and what not to -- so much is going on over here. And right now, I'm still working off my trip to Dublin. I'll probably feel inspired to crank out a few updates today, perhaps tomorrow morning, about Oxford, Dublin, and all the crazy happenings here at the world's most beautiful college from the mid-15th century.

I still owe you all Cambridge pictures. There is still so much more campus to see!

My picture taking has been lousy, but I just bought batteries, so I can capture the last week with no problem. My finals are finished now, and all I have left is a 2000 word essay analyzing two scenes from movies. I'm getting my hopes up, most likely, that it'll be super easy, so I haven't started yet.

I'm just grateful that my classes are finished. This has been an insanely busy 7 weeks, academically. And socially, which makes the academic thing all the more difficult.

Soon.

Brighton: The City of Bromance

Made my lonesome way down to Brighton -- the British Miami -- this last Friday to visit Barbara for part of the weekend and to see the school/town I almost studied in this summer. It's strange to think how close I came to not coming to Cambridge! Either way, it was a very chill weekend. Seeing Barb was, of course, awesome!

First, the place is huge, and so bright!! Basically, if Santa Barbara and San Francisco had a baby, it would be Brighton. It's so much like coastal California except it's gayer, if you can believe it. Because not only are there gay men everywhere, all the straight men act/look/sound gay too. Or "gay," rather -- the stereotypical sense of the word. And the accent doesn't help. My gaydar went haywire and then ceased to work after about 15 minutes of walking around The Lanes, which is a very windy, English-esque collection of streets that have pubs, shops and, well, people (gay men?) galore. I can't even say that I saw a lot of gay men while being there.

They may have been straight, who knows!

We went out to a club after hitting up a bar on Friday night, but the club was... well, it was Babylon, for those of you who I've forced "Queer as Folk" upon. Just with straight people, and girls. But not more girls than guys... on the contrary, guys were everywhere, which is strange, considering they aren't as prevalent in Cambridge clubs. Not that it really mattered: the guys (the straight ones!) had no interest in any girls, unless they were there with them. They were just interested in dancing with each other.

Yes, you read correctly: each other. I dunno, this place was whack. I wasn't drunk enough (or tipsy enough) not to laugh at most of the guys, who looked like models, but in a creepy, artificial kind of way.

It was a lot of fun just to watch people, 'cause it was SOOOOO different from being in Cambridge. The girls at least stand a chance of meeting someone here, even if they aren't as "attractive" or as good at dancing. It's all relative, I say. I like the intellectual, dorky, non-muscle-y types. =)

Pubs, pubs, and more pubs. Even in the middle of the day -- it is Barb's favorite activity. Heh, what else was there to do to distract us from shopping?

Didn't help, though. I bought three pairs of shoes. :|

On Saturday it was just wandering around, shopping, sitting in the park with cider and then going out to the Brighton Pier before heading back to campus (a whopping 20-minute bus ride away!) to get my stuff to leave.

On the pier.... we got donuts. Really good, warm, sugar-y donuts.

Here's me, enjoying my first bite! See that bird in the background? See how it looks like it is plotting some Hitchcockean destruction??

Just like my canon incident, this picture was taken about 5 seconds before a bird swooped out of nowhere and snatched my entire donut from my hand!

It happened so quickly, I could barely process the strange whoosh! and nip that grazed my thumb before seeing my poor donut plummet to the rocky beach below.

I didn't know whether to hunt it down or give it a gold medal. Barb and I like to think he did it on a dare. Hopefully he got a nice girl seagull out of it, the little dick.

The beach, as you can see, is enormous, but all rocks. But they're not sharp, at least, just smooth and round. It really is a British paradise, if ever there was one.

Good two days, overall. Travel wasn't a problem, though it took longer than I would have liked. I was just proud of myself for not getting on the wrong train.

Didn't get to see Charlie, unfortunately, didn't get to meet too many of Barb's friends. But it was still great! It was so very different from Cambridge, and while Brighton is totally happenin', I am glad (for me) that I came to Cambridge. Just simply for knowing that the building I'm currently sitting in is older than ANY BUILDING in the United States. That's pretty trippy.

Peace.

PS. Here are additional links to more photos:
Sheringham + Stonehenge
Bath + Salisbury
Brighton

Day Trips: A Montage

I'm going to try and keep this short and concise (ha! yeah right). It isn't full of much "happenings," just pictures and places. I just have too much to do, paper-wise, here and I should be researching for my terrifying Early/Modern British Theatre paper. What was I thinking taking that class?!?

Weekend trips: Go!
Sheringham

This is a beach front town on the North Sea -- about a 3 hour train ride from Cambridge. It was just a small group of us that went, lead by the amazing Jacqui, and we honestly did nothing but lounge around all day.

The town reminds me a little bit of a coast town in Maine. Like... seafood and ice cream everywhere. Just with more pubs.

It's hard to get used to the heat in England. I don't like it. I'm used to cloudy, semi-rainy, chilly weather now, and it is what I would prefer. Yes, I know it's summer, but I can't help it.

Sheringham was interesting. I'll just say this: I never want to hear an English person say ever again that American's are overweight. I have never seen so many lumpy (and unattractive) people in my life. And not only that, but they were like caricatures of real people. And too many people here own Crocs, which I think should be outlawed. I don't care if they're comfortable. Basically, while eating our fish & chips, lounging against a concrete wall overlooking the water, we people-watched like no time in my recent memory, and there were 1,000-page stories a minute, let me tell ya.

The beach, itself, was kind of a joke. When we got there the tide was up -- all the way up. And yet, there were still people on the rocks, soaking up the rarely-seen British sun. I mean...

Right? This is Britain, ya'll. Oy vey. I don't even wanna know what they'd do if they saw a Hawai'i beach.

It was an all-day outing, not too eventful, but fun nonetheless. It was good to hang out with people and just do nothing.

Stonehenge

This is definitely going to be a short section.

I saw it. It was there. I beheld it in all it's mysterious Celtic glory. That's it.

There really isn't anything to report other than
a) It was really cool to see,
b) I don't understand why people have to pay to see it, considering it's right on the side of the highway and all you'd really need to do is pull over,
c) There were way too many people there, and
d) It would have been worth it had I been able to get close to the stones and touch them... or something.

And could this picture be any less attractive of me? Yuck-O.

We were only there for an hour. It was like the Grand Canyon. "Great, there it is..... Let's go."

Then we headed off to...

Bath

My favorite town I've been to since being abroad, hands-down. It wasn't like Edinburgh -- which was a constant party, and totally happenin' town -- but it was a town I could see myself moving to, working in, and raising a family in.
The only thing we really "did" was see the Roman Baths. Not remarkable, but interesting nonetheless.

We got big phones from circa 1982 that informed us about all the sexy bath history.

That picture up-left looks like I'm about to pop-a-squat. Hot!

Anyway, I just loved the town. I dunno. We didn't do much -- mainly us girls shopped and walked around while making the guys tag along (they were such troopers, really), and I just got to enjoy the atmosphere of Bath. It was a little downtown Santa Barbara, a little Piedmont (geographically) and a little Ashland -- only with lots and lots of British flare!

If you want to go and spend a month or two in a cottage somewhere and just enjoy the British life, go to Bath. That's all I can say.

Salisbury

This was kind of a pointless outing. We stopped here for a few hours on our way home, to see Salisbury Cathedral. Well, our group actually went to the Evensong service (which totally blew compared to the King's Chapel performance! Salisbury choir is not good... not even kind of)... we were supposed to take a tour, but it started later than we could do, so we just found a pub and had some food before getting back on the bus to pass out for the 3 hour drive home.

The cathedral was beautiful, yes, but after a while they just all start to look the same. I mean... I get it: Gothic architecture: Amazing. I still think King's Chapel is the best.
The highlight of Salisbury was the menagerie of white swans in the river.

I mean... crap, they were everywhere and they're mutants! They were huge! And I felt sorry for the ducks who just wanted food. Granted, they held their own.

Alright. Yay. England! Wahoo!

This weekend will see me heading down to Barb and Charlie in Brighton for Friday and Saturday and then back up to go to Oxford on Sunday. Another busy weekend of traveling, but I am excited to see more of England, because that is my reason for being here.

I have so much to do in the next 3 weeks. And I may just not pass my British Theatre class because I've never taken a class more hard or complicated in my life.

I mean, check out my paper topic!

What do plays matter in Shakespeare's time?

What?!?! Vague, much?! Broad, endless topics infuriate me. I'm too much of a generalizer when topics aren't specific.

Oh well. Off to read about morality in Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedy. Wish me luck that I don't have an aneurysm.

PS. A shout-out to Carlin for introducing me through praise to Jeff Buckley, who is now my music companion. I needed to stop listening to Joshua Radin, Snow Patrol and The Smiths on constant repeat, despite how bomb they are. Buckley's remarkable, and very much my taste in music. Though, I still maintain that no one sings "Hallelujah" like Rufus does. I find it blasphemy to say otherwise.

J. Sprinkles Take Over

I've had a strangely busy weekend without too much event happening.

Lots of day-trips to update about in the coming days when I have the time and patience, which will hopefully be sooner rather than later. To the beach front of Sheringham on Friday, to Stonehenge, Bath and Salisbury the rest of the weekend, I'll have pictures to post and non-stories to tell. Mainly it was Carlin and I in the back of a bus confirming our code names for people/groups in the programme. Most of them were sitting around us. We've had to change one of our original code names because now too many people know the original.

That's life, I guess.

The weather has been insanely nice -- sun all the time, no rain, and very very warm air. It's a little sweltering in my room right now, and I'm afraid that the mosquitoes will eat me alive if I leave my window open. But I will anyway.

Only 3 weeks left of the programme, and I don't want it to be over. Except I kind of do. I don't want to take these classes anymore, and I love this town a lot. But mainly I just don't want to not see these people everyday. I'm sure I'll see people again, but it's sad to not be sure.

Though I'm looking forward to being home. Family, friends, IN&OUT and Baker. All I need.

Oh, to the SNtGL Support Group: there is a new prospect. We'll see. =)

Bought the cutest shoes on earth today in Bath. Had to say that because my excitement can't be contained. Now I have to find the perfect outfit so I can wear them to the next Formal Hall.

More to come.

"I wish I had taken more pictures..."

I know, I'm updating a lot today. It's just one of those days, where I'm gross and sleepy and want to stay in my room.

For those of you who aren't on Facebook (meaning my parents and Aunt Lynn -- hey guys!), I'm gonna post links to my photo albums so that you can see other pictures that I haven't posted here. This'll go all the way back to when I was in NYC.

New York City
Toulouse
Paris
Cambridge (so far...)
London
Edinburgh p.1, p.2, p.3
Yorkshire - Fountains Abbey

I'll make sure to post links from now on once I have new photos on Facebook. Maybe this way I can post less pictures here. But that wouldn't be as fun.

Craziness, ya'll. Formal Hall and subsequent partying last night was craziness. I'm feelin' the aftermath.

Trip to Edinburgh, Day Three

Technically this post has absolutely nothing to do with Edinburgh because we left at 8:30am to head back to Cambridge.

This time I was a tad hungover, coffee-less, bloated, ugly, but at least I was clean and the company was still good. On the way down we stopped in North Yorkshire to see Fountains Abbey. A lot of people who'd gone on the last trip said that this little stop was stupid and boring, but I thought it was anything but.

My legs, at this point, were hurting so much I didn't think I could stand (seriously, I have some sort of leg-tendon-arch problem that needs to be addressed post-haste), but I still managed to walk to the Abbey and all around.

It was beautiful. I won't talk anymore, just post pictures...

... and a little video (which is super boring and incomplete, but hey, whatever, it's pictures in motion!)...

The last two pictures are my favorites. A wallflower!! =) Yay! hehe... The very last one is amazing (Maxine took it) because it wasn't planned. Just a "Hey guys, turn around!" moment. Yeah, so that is cool. Like, really cool.

After 10 hours we finally got home, and then I got food and fell asleep at 7:45pm and didn't wake up again for almost 13 hours. I was so beat and my legs still hurt, but it was well worth it.

Until next time. Peace.