Royal Wedding, Royal Wedding!

Talk about a show-stopping event here in England (and not to mention America)!  I hear it was even bigger back in the states than it was here, which is a bit ironic, but nonetheless.  I figure it had something to do with the pomp and circumstance intermingled with years of tradition, which is something the states are fascinated with, mostly because we lack the ancient history.  My friends and I did indeed watch the whole parade and ceremony (2.5 hours worth), and I must say, it was a bit anticlimactic and awfully boring.  But really, what wedding isn't?  Of course, a wedding in person would be decent fun (especially the reception), but I can't say watching someone get married on television even comes close to being interesting.

The ceremony wasn't the big deal, though.  Honestly, it's been the build up and anticipation that's made this wedding memorable.  I have never seen so many things with Will and Kate's face printed upon them.  I'm talking spoons, table clothes, kitchen towels, bookmarks, glass paperweights, lockets, banners, flags, hats... you name it, I've seen it.  Oh, and milkshakes.  That's right.  Special milkshakes for the special day, here in Oxford!

Now, on to celebrating Queen Elizabeth's II milestone year!  It's been overshadowed by the wedding as of yet, but you will soon be hearing about the spectacular diamond jubilee!  QE II has been reigning for a tremendous 60 years this coming summer.  The only other monarch in British history to rule this long was Queen Victoria, who made it 60 years.  So, here's to QE II for staying fit and setting a new record!

For those who haven't seen the massacre of Saturday's Torpid's race, I thought I'd post it for good humor.  Yes, that is me getting tossed into the water by a huge mass of 8 male rowers moving at quite a quick pace.  Yes, it hurt for roughly 6 weeks afterwards.  Oh... and yes, we did win.

Cheers!

Happy Easter!

Made a fabulous Easter lunch today with some friends.  Pretty impressive for whipping everything together with very limited kitchenware.  We can't say it looked like it was presentable on a white tablecloth, but it was DEFINITELY delicious!

A few pictures:

In other news, Oxford is BEAUTIFUL.  The weather is to die for.  I don't know how I'm possibly going to get ANY work done here this term!  It's 70s every day, no humidity and mild clouds.  Seriously... I'm going to have to learn to work outside or I may be entirely screwed!

Flight booked for home on Monday, June 27th.  Bittersweet, really.  I'm sad to even think about leaving Oxford and everyone here but also excited to be back in the states.  Can't believe I only have one more year at Bryn Mawr, either.  Everything has gone so fast!  Graduate school will be upon me sooner than I know it.

Happy Easter!

Mom and Aunt Di recently came to visit me in merry ole England and we did our own little adventure around Great Britain, hitting Oxford, Stonehenge and Salisbury, Dublin, Edinburgh and finally, London!  It was a whirlwind 7 days of travel, but very fun and full of fairly decent weather!  True, Dublin was a bit rainy and windy and Edinburgh had its random rain shower, but all in all, not bad for the region!  It was a bit different traveling with mom and aunt di, seeing as I'm quite used to staying hostels... what are these things called hotels and bed and breakfasts?!  Shocking!  Anyhow, after becoming accustomed to those things (and very welcome amenities),  we became savvy in our traveling and managed to cover a lot of ground in a very short amount of time!

Here are some pictures of the journey!

Salisbury Cathedral

Salisbury Cathedral

Beer!

Navigating Dublin

Guinness factory!

Glendalough Monastery

Top of a Dublin 'mountain' - Irish countryside

Edinburgh castle

Chilly in Scotland!

Behind the National Gallery, Edinburgh

London decorated for the Royal Wedding!

Sorry for the lack of posts - traveling was nuts and jampacked with activities!

So, as I said before, Madrid was an awesome city.. apart from having my wallet nicked, which cost me 150 euros.  No fun at all, but oh well, guess my luck had run out in Spain after 4 cities.  I came back to Oxford for a day after Madrid, regrouped, did some laundry and then headed to London to stay with 12 other friends at Eddie's house to watch the Oxford v. Cambridge famous boat race.  Essentially, everyone was packed around the river in London for four hours, drinking and having a good time, only to watch a race that we saw approximately 20 seconds of... but it was worth it because Oxford kicked Cambridge's butt by a longshot!  After the race we all prepared to head off to Berlin in the very, very early morning.

Boatrace fun

Go Oxford!

All of the press covering the big race... (look to the far top-left to see how much Oxford is winning by!)

--

BERLIN

A very cool city, but a bit odd because it was so new due to the destruction of most of the buildings during the second world war.  The Reichtag (government building) was beautiful, as was the large Berlin dome.  Our hostel was right near museum island which was packed with awesome museums of every sort.  I visited two parts of the Berlin Wall as well as quite a few museums and historical sites around the town.  Berlin also had interesting sections to it, such as the art district, which was full of graffiti and rundown looking buildings.  It had a lot of character.  I had my first LITRE of beer there, called a Stein, which was as big as my head.  On our last night in Berlin, everyone went out and stayed up all night before heading to Amsterdam, which made for a very comedic traveling experience.

Relaxing in front of the Berliner Dome

All 12 of us in Berlin!

With our Steins!

Group hug in front of the Reichtag

The Reichtag

Part of the Berlin Wall

AMSTERDAM

Our group went from 12 people to 9 as we made our way to the Netherlands.  Amsterdam is one of my top three favorite cities, hands down.  Not only are the buildings beautiful and very unique, but the canals really give the city a surreal feel.  There are canals absolutely everywhere you look (more than in Venice) and they make the city picturesque.  Amsterdam was one of the most walkable cities I've ever been in and was chock-full of interesting neighborhoods.  I did indeed visit the Red Light District (several times, in fact) and it wasn't too bad - a lot of bar life revolves around that area, so it's a pretty busy region.  Some other cool places included the floating flower market, the main square with a palace and monument (where I saw a MASSIVE pillow fight occur...), central train station, Anne Frank museum and many, many bars.  We were really lucky for the majority of our trip because the weather was so mild, even in windy Amsterdam.

All 9 of us!

In a famous Dutch clog!

In the middle of Amsterdam's biggest square, there was a massive impromptu pillow fight...

Full of canals

Making our way through the city

Flower market

Visited Santander for a few days, but it was sadly cold and rainy so we didn´t experience the lovely Atlantic Ocean side of Spain.  It was still picturesque, just wish it had been warm and sunny like Alicante!

We landed in Madrid bright and early yesterday.  WHAT AN AMAZING CITY.  A very close second to Rome, I´d say.  It has these amazing plazas with great restaurants, architecture and amazing parks everywhere!  The city is just very people friendly and still manages to be clean even though its' population is massive.  very impressive.

Expect a LOAD of pictures from Madrid.  The place is just perfect for photography.  Saw a lovely castle today, the famous Prado museum, the large Park (there are so many around, it's crazy), botanical garden, etc!  I'm going a bit picture crazy.

Alicante

Landed in Alicante yesterday, bright and early.. after a very eventful journey.  We had to leave Oxford at 1am to catch the bus to the airport because it was the only one that got us there before our flight.  However, we had about 4 hours to kill in the airport, which proved difficult since the chairs were possibly the most awkward things to try to sleep in, ever.  We made it through, hopped on the plane and had a lovely flight sandiwiching a very old man who was going on a bowling expedition with about 38 other seniors.  Sabrina and I were easily the youngest on that plane by decades.  Anyway, the landing to Alicante was one of the most beautiful I´ve ever experienced: we flew over some mountains full of tiny villages and then into the mediterranean sea, where we had to circle back and land on the coast of the city.  It was breathtaking.

Our first day we basically spent time at the beach and marina and met up with my Ohio friend Sarah.  She showed us a lot of the town, which is quite different than expected.  It´s small and pretty busy, not as much ancient architecture as other cities but still a quaint area.  Today we met her host mother, Marga, who cooked us the best chicken paella.  She then fed us strawberries doused in whip cream (she added more and more to mine.. AKA, I ate a mountain of whipped cream and very few strawberries)... followed by two shots of after-lunch grape based liquer.  Good times!

We´re heading out to Santander mid-day tomorrow to meet with Sabrina´s friend from home and also our American friend from Oxford, Sheldon.  It´s Sheldon´s birthday today, so we´re taking him out on the town tomorrow, big time.  Poor kid!

Off for more yummy Spanish foooooooood!

beach & the med sea!

in the meantime, for your entertainment!

The last day of Hilary term consisted of a HARRY POTTER themed pub crawl.  Here are pictures for your entertainment.

left to right:  angry slytherin, winky the house elf, hannah the mandrake root and moaning myrtle

just some friendly dragons

free house-elves!

Magical creatures!

we found crookshanks!

and the traveling begins again!

Well, Hilary term has come to a close (seriously, where does time go?!) and this the time for traveling  begins again!  I'm going to travel with many different people this time, so it'll be quite a different experience but a fantastic one nonetheless!  Here's an outline of my plans:

March 13, fly to Alicante, Spain to visit my very good friend from Ohio who is studying abroad there.  I'm traveling with Sabrina, a good friend from Oxford who is also American.  On March 15, we fly to Santander, Spain to see one of Sabrina's friends and our fellow Oxford American Sheldon meets up with us.   On March 17, we fly to Madrid and meet up with Isabela, my first-year roommate at Bryn Mawr.  We stay in Madrid for 4 days then head up to Paris, where Isabela is studying abroad and where I also have many friends.  On March 24, we fly back to Oxford/London and then head into London for the famous Oxford v. Cambridge boat race!  There will be a huge number of us staying at Eddie's house for the race so it's bound to bring up some funny stories.  On March 28, a group of about 11 of us fly to Berlin for four days and then to Amsterdam, returning back to London on April 4th.  Not sure where I will be April 4 - 10, but I hope to be visiting Keir in Bath as well as a few other Oxford friends.  On April 10, mom and aunt Di come into town and we begin our whirlwind journey to Oxford, around England, Dublin, Edinburgh and London.  I then have some free time that may or may not include pre-training with my boatclub and then we're all the way back to term!

I really can't imagine only spending one more term here.  I'm going to be making the most of it, that's for sure.

Look for updates and pictures from my travels!

Torpids pictures, here we come!

Men's 2nd boat did the best out of all of the St. Anne's boats, bumping everyday and thus winning blades with their names on it!  Very prestigious.  They bumped up a whole division, as well.  Congrats to them!

My boat, men's 1st, bumped twice but the excitement certainly occurred on the last day... when I was sent for a swim without intention!  We had JUST bumped and the boat in front of us wouldn't get out of the way/crashed, and so we were blocking part of the river.  A boat didn't see that we had stopped and came straight at us.  One of their oars/blades hit me square in the back and sent me into the river.  What a shock - so cold!  I then had to walk back 20+min to our boathouse, sopping wet, and my crew had to row home with only 7 rowers since my stroke seat had to take over as cox.  It was SO funny.  The whole race got called because of that, but we still got our bump, so overall it was a success!  That's one for the memory books.

Here are some pictures!

Men's 2nd right before the race that got them blades!

Eddie, Sheldon & I

Men's 1st, my boat!

M2 after they won blades!

Women's 1st

After I got tossed from the boat...

after falling in the river!

M1 love!

M1 a bit more classy

M2 classy

one of the giant bruises from my catapult from the boat..

The countdown to Torpids...

24 hours until St. Anne's Men's 1st boat takes to the water to show some domination at Torpids!  For all of you reading this who have no idea what a traditional Oxford-style bumps race is, I've provided some very interesting (and somewhat hilarious) clips of the pros and cons of this race.

We race every single day from tomorrow until Saturday, only once.  The race course varies because as soon as you bump another boat, you've succeeded in your goal and you can stop racing and move to the side.  So, we can end up racing only a few meters or we can end up racing the entire 1.4k race.  Crossing our fingers for some quick bumps on Wednesday and Thursday, as we have some much slower boats in front of us.  We're slated to be in the top 2 boats of our division and probably one of the top 5 boats on the entire river, so we're really psyched to show it at Torpids!  Anne's hasn't been this good in over 40 years, so here we come!  We also have the potential to win blades (yes, literally, giant oars) if we bump every day.  Hopefully I'll get to ship one back to the states!

So, without further ado, here are some videos:

Wadham bumping

What NOT to do... (foul language!)

Another view of the above video.. ouch!

Founder's dinner!

We got to use the famous Oxford robes (sub-fusc style) and eat in style with all of the finalists.. and our friends!  Delicious food and company, as usual.  Here are some pictures!