It's a hard knock life, but someone's gotta live it

Not that any of you care, but seriously, I need a freaking haircut. My hair goes into a ponytail now (mind you a tiny-pony, like a mini pony, but still, a pony none-the-less).

SEEEEEEEEEEEE.......

Mini-pony Excitment!

But for reals, June 4th can't come soon enough to get my mop cropped. Now, on to less important matters than my hair, *ahem*, I am leaving tomorrow for Ireland! Yay! So excited, except as of now the weather says it's supposed to be rainy/overcast the entire time we're there, so that'll suck. Hopefully it's wrong. I don't mind a little rain, and some clouds, but not 24/7 for a couple days when I'm trying to be a tourist. That's a no go situation. We're leaving tomorrow afternoon and coming back Wednesday evening and then after that, it's only a mere week and a half and I head back to California. I cannot believe it. Crazy crazy crazy. My last week is going to be spent just hanging out in the city and soaking it up while it lasts.

So what's been going on this week, well, other than finishing my coursework and taking my exam, not much. Monday Aubs and I went to Hyde Park to celebrate being done w/ school (since I knew my exam was going to be a joke) and also to soak up some sun.

Rose garden in Hyde park

Yay! Freedom!

Love this archway walkway thingy

I don't know if this is like some sort of mini-stonehenge or what, but it was pretty.

What's better than enjoying a sunny day in the park? Doing it with ICECREAM!

Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, which was really cool.

I was pretty much a bum most of the week, until Thursday when I decided I should do something of some sort of substance (that was a lot of s's there... wow). Anywho's, I decided to hit up my two remaining museums, the Tate Modern and the Imperial War Museum. I don't have many photos b/c you can't take pictures in the TM (lame) but I totally took some before I knew that :) and the Imperial War museum is not something you photograph. They had the most amazing 2 floor exhibit on the Holocaust that had me on the verge of tears numerous time. So heart wrenching and saddening and every other adjective out there. 

GIANT dining room furniture. Look Sara, your table set is famous! and huge. I could walk under this sucker. If you look under the chair on the left, you can see a person, that's how big this thing is.

Monet's Water-lilies

The TM was kind of lame actually. I don't love modern art, but I can appreciate some of it. I love MOMA in SF, but this one did not impress me.

Imperial War Museum

A piece of the Berlin Wall outside the IWM

The main hall inside the IWM

Me after spending the whole day in 2 museums.

Thursday evening wrapped up with a Study Abroad event. The international studies office had us all out to dinner at Pizza Express and then we road the London Eye (again) and we didn't have to pay! (Oh wait, we already paid for it in our fees, seriously, they told us that. Which would be why I rode the eye again.)

Aubs and Dana at dinner

On the eye (again)

Today I had to go to campus, a trip that will likely be my last to that area of town, so I decided I should take some more photos.

This is the Tower Building, which is huge and confusing but this is the area where all of my classes were.

Another part of the Tower Building.

Shell gas! Ok, now I know it looks like they have super cheap petrol, but let's do some math. It's 96.9 pence (almost 1 pound) per LITRE. There are 4.55 liters in a gallon, so that's 4.41 pounds. With the current conversion rate between pounds sterling and US dollars, thats basically $6.70 per gallon. Yeah, Hellloooo public transport.

Walking home from school, this is a shot of Islington, the area where I live.

Cutest window display meant just for me. Seriously, banana's, a bee rainsuit! Sweet! minus the stuffed spider, ew.

My tube stop, lets hear it for the Angel yo.

I love these buildings, and I see them everyday as I hike up the little hill towards Angel.

Just to illustrate how in the middle of the city I am, as in Zone 1, this is the street I walk to get to my flat, I'm about 4-5 blocks away and from here you can see the tip of the Gherkin (the weird egg building) which is in the financial district of The City.

Almost home, here's my bus stop.

Final stretch! You can see the tip of the Liberty sign if you look real hard on the right hand side of the end of the sidewalk.

Love it! So now I'm being super sophisticated and you should all be jealous because... I'm doing laundry. I know, I know, feel free to hate me. :) 

See ya'll post-Ireland.

Now you see what I do with my new found free time UPDATED: With all new funnies

I'm so done it's amazing. I turned in my last essay on Monday and took my genetics exam today (which, by the way, was a complete joke and total waste of freaking time. If you even glanced at your tutorials or went to class, you could pass that sucker in your sleep, all like 25 questions of it, it took me 30 minutes, and that was checking, rechecking, pausing, pacing and forcing myself not to be done in 15 minutes) which means that I am a FREE BIRD until I fly out of here on the 31st. Shh... hear that? That's the sound of not having anything hanging over my head to make me feel guilty if I want to lay in a park for 3 hours, or take a nap, or go to the pub. Ahhh... sweet relief.

Something I'm totally going to miss about having to ride the buses here is when you're on the upper deck and all of a sudden the automated voice reminds you that drinking is prohibited on London buses.... and then shortly there after that smoking is prohibited on London buses... and all I can think is what douchebag down below seriously thought they could roll up on the bus with a tall can in one hand and a hand-rolled in the other? Because someone did. But I'm always up top so I miss giving the culprit the stink-eye.

This just made me piss my pants laughing out loud.  I can't take the credit for finding this, I totally got it off of the comments of one of my favorite blogs that I read called The Bloggess, but it is a site... about cats... who look like Hilter. No joke. Don't believe me? Check out Kitler for yourselves HERE. I'm still laughing because it's just the most ridiculous and amazing thing I've witnessed lately.

Paws in the air folks, it's Kitler. 

UPDATE: Ok, it's not really that exciting, but I forgot to tell you the story about that time when my friend Aubrey was kind enough to offer herself up for manual labor and help me carry 2 boxes down to a place to have them shipped home. And about how the boxes weren't really that heavy and the walk wasn't really that far, until you combined the two and then it became the walk of terror. Seriously. A 10 kg box not so bad right? (That's about 22 lbs for you non-metric folks) About a mile walk is nothing for us city walkers, eh? Uh, no. My forearms and lower back are not my friends today. In fact, they are rebelling along with my jaw who decided now was a perfect time to flare up with the ol' TMJ again. Fan-freaking-tastic. But on a happier note, I definitely did NOT have the swiney flu, as I'm getting almost to healthy status... minus the incapacitation's previously listed above.

Moral of the story: Call a taxi and don't get sick and have to be a mouth breather b/c TMJ will not become your friend. :) 

We totally rocked out to Hanson

The farewells have begun.  My friend Claudia left this morning to go back to Italy and we all went out last night to hang one last time before she left. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I know I'll be seeing her again, whether she comes to Cali or I go back to Italy.... or both, but it's hard knowing I won't run into her walking in Angel or in the library or at Starbucks. And it's a big wake up call for the next 3 weeks. Anywho's, we went out to a late dinner last night and then hit a club in Angel where they have "I Love the 90's" every Friday night, which is pretty freakin' sweet! Granted, I didn't enjoy it to the fullest because I still didn't feel (and don't feel) that hot, but I went for Claudia and had a good time.

How I love this crazy Italian girl.

You know you do too!

Before we got all hot n' sweaty dancing.

Dancin' fools

See, hot n' sweaty.

And now for the story I TOTALLY forgot to tell when I posted about the McFly concert. So, we had a hell of a time getting back because for some reason the Piccadily line closed before 11:30, so we waited for a bus to head back to town, but the bus we got on just randomly terminated at Marble Arch and we were totally confused as to why. Thankfully another bus was right behind us that would take us back to Kings Cross, so we board, grab a seat and are bouncing along when I mentioned to Alexis how in London they are seriously all about the honor system with bus fares and such because I have never seen them check anything. I know that on the tube they'll have people dressed in plain clothes and then when the tube takes off they'll stand up and check people's tickets, but I've never seen it. And I imagined they checked buses as well. This topic came to me because I saw a couple board and sit, without tapping an Oyster card or anything. Conversation over, we hit the next stop and BAM, it's a freaking Raid. It. Was. Amazing. There were British Transport/Metropolitan police everywhere, and they boarded at both doors and we were on one of the weird long bendy buses, instead of a double decker. So anywho's, they start checking people's tickets and oyster cards to see if they validated, and it's like some seriously hard core raidage going on, and what do you know, the couple gets BUSTED. I'm dying to giggle inside as they cop asks why they didn't get a ticket before boarding and then they get pulled off the bus and I saw them totally getting a ticket as we pulled away.

But, before we left, there was a group of asian boys that boarded. One, Two tapped their oysters, a third tapped his and got the mad buzzer telling him he didn't have enough money. So he looks at the cop standing there and goes:

"What do I do if I don't have enough money on here?"

And the cop says:

"Get off the bus."

The kid goes:

"But it's only 80p, and my friends have already paid."

Cop: "You don't have enough, so you can't ride, so you get off."

And they went back and forth until the cop got really irritated and I thought he was going to mace the kid in his face only they don't carry mace because it's illegal and they don't even have guns, seriously, the cops don't carry guns, so all he could do was like arrest the kid, or maybe baton him to death. I don't know if they carry those, but basically it was like the most exciting thing I've seen. It was so cool! Our bus totally got raided. I was a little peeved as it was seriously late, we were tired, the bus was already taking forever and we had to get up at like 5 am to go to Newcastle the next day. But all in all, totally worth it.

Alright, off to do some errands before heading to my friend's flat warming party.

Remember, always validate your oyster, and if you don't, then you better be a fast runner because your ass is gonna be grass. Seriously, 80 pound find when the bus far is max 1.60 or something, so not worth it.

Chinese water torture has to be better than this

For reals here, I'm not a happy camper. I am freaking SICK! As a dog. Sort of. I've been inside for 2 days hoping that it would make me get better, sleeping, drinking lots of water and then taking nyquil so I can pass the hell out and sleep at night and what do I get? Nothing. Big fat nothing. Except more snot. Ug. And before anyone freaks out, no I do not have the swing flu (though how cool would that be because honestly, I think you should sprout a snout or a curly tail or something, it could be just like Penelope and then James McAvoy could come save the day and we'd all be happy). Ahem, anyways.... like I was saying, it's just a head cold, trapped in my sinuses right now and I'm 99% sure it was allergy induced. But what really ticks me off is that it has JACKED my social calendar all. to. hell. Not only have  I not been able to go to the library to get my last essay done b/c right, like I could concentrate and the people are like nazis there, if you make noise, you get "Excused me'd" and shushed all over the place so imagine me blowing my nose up in there? Yeah, uh-huh, right. I'd be on my ass outside in a heart beat. So no work has been done and I didn't get to go to a show I wanted to see last night and tonight we're all supposed to go to this bar/club in Angel where they have "I love the 90's" every friday night and that's probably not going to happen. Suck. Especially since these have been Claudia's last 3 days in town and I haven't been able to hang out with her. 

And to top it off I'm sick of being stuck in my teeny, tiny room. Oi, I'm climbing the walls. So annoying. But I have to go to campus today to turn in my 2 essays that are done b/c one is due Monday and I don't want to have to deal with the line to submit essays on a Monday frankly. So at least I'll get out of here for a little while.

So no new photos, unless you want a photo of my massive pile of used kleenex? Yeah, I didn't think so.  Lets hope this goes away soon, otherwise I'm going to go nuts here.

If it's the Swine Flu, will you get a snout?

I woke up today with every intent of hitting the library as soon as it opened to do my last essay, but that's a no go. It's been windy here the past couple days, and since it's spring and everything is in bloom, hello Mr. Allergy, it has been awhile since I've seen you my old friend. So I'm kind of trapped inside, b/c it's still windy and I'm blowing my nose like a son-of-a-gun. No bueno.   But at least it gives me time to do a long over due post.  

My friend Claudia's birthday was a few days ago, and so for her birthday she wanted to go to the Natural History Museum (a woman after my own heart, yes, it's true) so we went, and it was totally Out Of This World! hahaha

This was an earthquake simulator.  It simulated an earthquake that happened in Japan, totally cool! And then afterwards some guy came up to us and started talking to us about how he was from California and how there earthquakes roll and yadda yadda until I raised my hand and said "Um, yeah I know, I'm from there." And he got a little confused. I think he thought he was hitting on some unknowing British girls, sorry dude. Totally. American. Yo.

Ok, seriously, this guy is a CHAMP! Check out the size of that leaf. You go buddy!

A ginormous robotic T-Rex. He was kind of creepy, but cool.

The Birthday Girl on the left!

The outside of the museum is so pretty.

Later that night we all got together for a dinner party for Claudia's b-day. (L to R: Charlotte, Ana (yes, it's confusing when we're together), Aubs, and Dana)

Claudia being totally surprised with her little cake.

On May 1st, Alexis and I went to go see a British band I totally lurve that luckily was on tour while we're here! They're called McFly. It was tons-o-fun.

McFly!

Then this past weekend the girls and I went to Newcastle, which is a city in England up by the Scottish border. We went up there to see Hadrian's Wall, if you don't know what that is, just go here and check it out, cause it's awesome.

This is us on Saturday walking around Newcastle.

Checking out Newcastle and enjoying the sunshine!

A church

Our hotel room. Yup. 4 girls, 1 bed. We're cheap ok and hotels were expensive. So we had a big slumber party all over the room. Good times.

One of the bridges in Newcastle made to resemble the Sydney Bridge.

On Sunday we took about an hour and a half bus out to a little town called Once Brewed, which is in Northumberland National Park so that we could walk along Hadrian's Wall. We took about a 3 mile hike and it was AMAZING.

Claudia and I sitting on Hadrian's Wall at the start of our hike.

We climbed up this sucker, and several other large/steep hills. You can see the Wall in the back.

Say cheese (in all my totally hot, hiking glory)

Hadrian's Wall stretching across the countryside. So beautiful.

Recognize this tree? If you've seen the Kevin Costner version of Robin Hood you should. This is Sycamore Gap.

Enjoying your hike ladies?

The footpath led through a couple wooded areas, LOVE.

This used to be one side of a gate that would allow people to cross through the wall.

Along the wall are milecastles or guard points as well as a fort or two. This is Housesteads Roman Fort.

After we got back from Newcastle, we decided we wanted to get together and cook dinner, since our Claudia is going home on Saturday. So Monday night we got together, went shopping, and made Pasta of course!

The Italian girl working her magic with the sauce.

Mmmmmmm....

And as yesterday was Cinco de Mayo, a holiday which clearly no English people know about, we decided to go to a place for a few drinks and chips and salsa. Unfortunately, no one here knows good Mexican food, and you have to pay for chips and salsa, but we had fun nonetheless.

Claudia, Ana and Alexis say Happy Cinco-de-Mayo to you!

Mojito? Why thank you.

And that's what I've been up to, other than sleeping and writing 1 more essay that is. 2 done, 1 to go and I'm D-U-N, done. Lots of stuff coming up that I'm planning on doing, all of it in the city though. It's hard to believe that my time here is coming to a rapid end and that almost 15 weeks have gone by in the blink of an eye. But I'm getting ready to be back in Cali and see you all again! :)

Off to read and blow my nose. My life is so exciting, I know.