There's No Place Like Home

Well I finished off my last week for the first semester in London.  It was a stressful week of finals, packing, and saying goodbye to some friends, but thankfully I made it home safely Thursday night.  I took a direct flight to Phoenix and my flight was not full, I got three seats to myself.  It was a wonderful experience in terms of international travel. There was a lot of excitement in this last week as well though.  We got to have a special dinner at Cantina Laredos, a Mexican restaurant in London.  It was the best Mexican food I had ever had in the UK.  We also got to go on the London eye as a final celebration after we had all finished finals.  It was great but I am so happy to be home now.  Being gone from Arizona for so long made me forget how much I missed the warmth and the beautiful sunsets.  Now I have just enough time to relax before heading back for the second semester. 

Snow in the Park behind the house

Princes Gate in the Snow

Big Ben by night

Riding in the Eye

Thanksgiving and My 20th Birthday

This week has been by far one of the best weeks I have spent in Europe.  I am lucky enough to have my Mom and one of my little sisters in London visiting.  They got here on Monday and requested fish and chips immediately.  Maggie had never had them before but I think it is her new favorite.  On Tuesday night we went and saw Wicked.  I had seen it once before but it never gets old.  It was funny to hear the songs that I knew by heart off the soundtrack sung with British accents.  It took some getting used to.  On Wednesday night there was a group event with dinner and then a show.  The show that night happened to be Oliver.  I liked it but this time the accents were even thicker and harder to understand.  Half the time I had no idea what was going on.  Thanksgiving morning I went to class, they do not celebrate Thanksgiving here, not even if you are attending an American university, and then went to a Thanksgiving service at St. Paul's Cathedral.  The service was put on by the US embassy and the ambassador from the US for the UK was there.  The cathedral was beautiful and I couldn't believe I was attending a service in such a beautiful place.  That night we had a big Thanksgiving dinner over at the dinning room of Imperial College, just across the street.  The British interpretation of Thanksgiving dinner is a little off though.  The meal was good, but for stuffing they had patties that tasted like sausage and for desert the pumpkin pie was all crust with a paper thin layer of "pumpkin."  I also found it odd that they served an apple pie with pistachio ice cream.  As an overall review of the meal I would say the dinner was pretty good, but the desert was bad.  That night I went over to the apartment that my mom and Maggie were staying at in preparation for our 8:50 train on Friday morning.  Friday morning we got on our train to Paris which took us through the chunnel, well I think, I was asleep the whole time and Maggie said we were in a tunnel for a long time so I'm guessing that was it.  It was extremely chilly when we got to Paris.  We bundled up and headed off to our hotel.  Our hotel was just across the street from the Notre Dame and so we made that our first stop.  Right as we walked up to the Cathedral it started snowing.  It was a magical experience.  The next day was my 20th birthday.  Instead of birthday cake I had a birthday crepe.  We went to the Louvre, walked down the Champ de Elysees, and went up to the top of the Eifel tour.  It was all so amazing.  On Sunday we did a river tour on the river Seine, explored more of Paris, and then took a train back to London.  It was a wonderful weekend and I enjoyed every minute of it! Countdown until America 10 DAYS!!!!!!

Another Weekend in London

Well I have less than three weeks until holiday.  Yes I just threw in a British term, it is really rubbing off on me.  Yesterday I asked where to put my rubbish, I think it is about time for a visit to America.  Well thankfully I have a flight home on December 9th.  Everyone in the house is getting excited for Christmas and going home.  We have already decorated the house and we put up a little Christmas tree in the reception area!  Tonight I am planning on going to the little cafe above the ice rink across the street.  There are a bunch of Christmas Trees and lights set up, and it is defiantly hot chocolate weather here! So this weekend was one of my roommates birthday and so we baked her a cake at midnight.  On her birthday we went to a really cool Mexican restaurant in Leicester Square.  It was called Chiquito's and they had really good burrito's, probably the only ones in all of London. The British are not very familiar with Mexican food.  After we went and saw the new Harry Potter movie which was really cool because there were some scenes in London, places that we go by everyday.  Although I am not up to date on everything Harry Potter I thought it was a really good movie.  When we got back to the house my roommate had a package waiting which just happened to be another birthday cake, so we ate more birthday cake!!!!  It was a wonderful Friday.  On Saturday I took a day trip to Cambridge.  It was really pretty and it reminded me a lot of Oxford.  It was freezing there though.  This Sunday has simply been packed with homework and studying.  It is crunch time now that the semester is almost over.  Every class is having us give presentations or write papers at the same time, but I am looking forward to the week ahead, as it is my last week as a teenager!!!

Christmas Spirit at the London House

King's College- Cambridge

Cambridge

Cambridge

La Suisse- weekend in Lausanne!

This weekend I got to travel to Switzerland.  Pepperdine has a house in Lausanne, Switzerland which is an hour train ride from Geneva just around the lake.  It was so pretty and we had fantastic weather.  I came with one of my heaviest coats and gloves and ended up walking around town in a t-shirt. I got to meet a lot of the Pepperdine students studying in Lausanne and they were all really nice.  On Saturday we went to a quaint little Swiss town with an old castle and had lunch on a cute cobble stone street.  The view was amazing.  You could see the mountains topped in snow but it was still so warm outside.  After that we took a train to another small town where there is a chocolate factory called Callier.  Apparently it is the Swiss version of Nestle.  We were going to take a tour but there were too many people and the cut the line off just before us, so instead we went to the chocolate shop and bought chocolate.  I got a caramel chocolate that was delicious.  It was a really nice weekend to just hang out in the beautiful city of Lausanne.  We didn't do a lot but just being there was enough.  Even the train between the airport and the house was stunning.  It was a much needed relaxing weekend to say the least.

Castle

Castle Courtyard

Switzerland Flag

Pepperdine House

Amazing!

Me and Katie!

Fall Break- Austria and Germany

So I didn't blog last weekend because there was nothing too eventful going on.  It was just a weekend filled with absolute chaos of studying and paper writing due to the fact that we had long weekend coming up.  I am glad to say that this weekend was much better, probably the best yet.  For long weekend my itinerary included stays in Vienna, Salzburg, and Berlin, and it was all AMAZING.  We started off in Vienna.  We went to the Natural History Museum and I saw the Venus of Willendorf, a little statuette that I had learned about in many Humanities and Art History classes.  We then went to the Art Museum across the way and saw some classical looking art.  We walked through the Vienna streets at night and it was absolutely stunning.  There were Christmas lights set up although they weren't on sadly.  Vienna was such a beautiful city that you couldn't even  tell it was also a large metropolitan area.  The next day we explored the palaces of Vienna.  My favorite was the Belvedere Palace!  That afternoon we hopped on a train to Salzburg. 

Mozart Statue in Vienna

Vienna by Night

Belvedere Palace

Our first night there we went out to explore the city, although everything was already closed.  We also saw the house of Mozart that first night.  The next day was my favorite day of the entire trip the SOUND OF MUSIC TOUR!  I got to go and see all the sights that were filmed from the sound of music and even now I am holding back from singing "the hills are alive with the sound of music" all around the house.  It was amazing.  It was cool to see the buildings and lake that were filmed but the best part was seeing the mountain side that was filmed.  It was so beautiful and there is nothing I can equate it to.  We also got the best apple strudel in Salzburg.  I know this because I tried it everywhere we went.  I was even thinking of titling this blog, "A Week of Apple Strudels."  Now apple strudel is my absolute favorite dessert ever, too bad I will have to travel all the way into the mountains of Salzburg to get it.  After our tour we decided to souvenir shop and explore the city more.  We got a train to the top of the fortress where the castle was and got some cool pictures of the city. 

Mozart House

Lake filmed for Sound of Music

I am 16 going on 17

The Von Trapp House

the hills are alive with the sound of music

Maria and the Captain's wedding was here

Scene from Do-Re-Mi

I can just see Julie Andrews running down it now!

The Do-Re-Mi Steps

Mozart Bridge, also in Sound of Music

Overlooking Salzburg

That night we got on a night train to Berlin.  We were off, out of Austria and into Germany.  Upon arrival in Berlin we got tickets for a hop on hop off City Tour Bus and traveled around the city.  There were so many interesting things to see, and it was amazing how recent the history of Berlin actually is.  Well I've probably been going on too much by now, the pictures speak for themselves of how amazing this trip was.  The weather for majority of the trip was amazing except in Berlin, which was by the way,  the COLDEST city I have ever been in.

Checkpoint Charlie

Berlin Wall

Berlin Wall

Gate Between East and West Berlin

Back to London!

So this week was a good week for recovery of our jam packed week in Greece.  Most of our classes were good about easing us back into the flow of things.  Mostly handing back our mid-terms.  Surprisingly I didn't have a heart attack with each test that came back so I am really starting to love the London program even more.  This weekend I went to Oxford.  It was so beautiful! I was thinking I should have applied there. It is such a quaint little college town. Although there are a million different colleges there so it is a little bigger.  The college that I walked through was Christ Church.  Some of the scenes from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone were filmed there.  In the United Kingdom it is called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.  Everyone in the house is obsessed with Harry Potter so I also bought my ticket to new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows movie this weekend.  So although I wasn't a huge Harry Potter fan before I feel like the people in this house will make me one.  There were a few students from the Florence program that stayed in the house this weekend so on Saturday we did tourist stuff.  We took them to all the sites that we saw during our orientation.  It's funny to see people snapping pictures of stuff I get to see so often, I guess I have become accustomed to my surroundings.  I still absolutely love London and I can't believe how time flies, finals start in six weeks, ahhhhh!

Beautiful

Oxford- Christ Church

Courtyard (parts of Harry Potter filmed here)

Stairs where Harry Potter was filmed

Inspiration for the hall in Harry Potter