amsterdam, kickin it with the dutch

so on wednesday a bunch of my friends and myself flew to amsterdam for the weekend. we decided the week before to go and it was definitely worth the trip. we hit the ground running as soon as our plane touched down, going to a bar before we checked into our hostel. even though it was wednesday night, we were out til 3 am trying out different pubs and bumpin around

in front of the i amsterdam sign

thursday morning we were out the door at 1 pm, early risers...rough life. after everyone got their hostel showers, our first stop was the heineken museum. at first i didn't think it would be worth the 15 euros, 3 free pints of beer later i was exceptionally pleased. we got a full blown tour of how heineken is actually made. we got to taste the barley before they put in the hopps. i think i might like beer better if they forgot about the hopps.

fooling around at the heineken museum

friday morning we went to see anne frank's house. my whole life i thought anne frank lived in germany, until i came to amsterdam. study abroad is a learning experience! but i read the packet they gave us at the museum, and she did live in germany at one point. boom. anyway, it was such a moving place. seeing the bedroom she spent years of her life in just made us all appreciate how lucky we are to have the lives we do. i think next on my reading list is her diary, however, knowing my record of a one book/9 months, this might be after this blog's duration

view from our hostel

d and a and da!

after anne frank we went to the i am amsterdam sign and snapped some pics for the book. and our moms. i realized that there is a DA, which are my initials, in amsterdam so of course i took a million of daina in between the D and the A! then our group went to the van gogh museum. given the high probability that i have a.d.d, museums of a million paintings aren't really places where i tend to excel, so i decided to hit up the sex museum with ryan instead. (this is the part where i get in trouble with my parents)

after the sex museum we went to a pub and met our friends who got in that day. my poor friend victor got pickpocketed on the tram, so him and i spent friday night bouncing around  police stations, hotels, hostels, and internet cafe's to cancel his cards, and get on a flight back to london.

after the pick pocketing adventure. out of blankets, but hey, he's a steeler

gotta maintain that 30% emo

a late friday night and early friday morning left me with 2 hours of sleep, but as soon as i got back in to london i met danielle, who was in town. we hit the town sightseeing even though it was super duper cold outside and did my favorite walk across the millennium bridge to st. pauls battling gale force winds. later that night we met up with alot of bu in london kids, and did some karaoke

small world, protestin, and FIREs!

ah so i am getting to that point where i'm thinking, i am not a blogger, i'm an engineer. writing is not how i roll, but i'm gonna do my best to keep it up! bear with me if the entries get shorter.

so this week we had a field trip to parliament to tour around the buildings. we got there kind of late and it was impossible to hear our professor, but i just kept thinking " i am at parliament....for school." it is sooo beautiful.

our field trip

earlier that day we got an email from the u.s. embassy saying so stay away from parliament later in the day (after our field trip)...there we're going to be protests, and the last time there were protests some kid threw a fire extinguisher out the window and almost killed some people...obviously we stayed to watch the protests. it was AWESOME. there were like a billion people and a billion more police officers. they just marched around and stuff but we literally almost got ran over, partly cause we were standing in the path, woops.

protests!

we went to a pub on thursday night called oneills in leicester square, which i'm realizing most people probably dont know where that is, which is making me think of me and fryd head making fun of alex last semester and the poaijhsdgjhfdasfkja names she typed on her blog which we had no idea what in the heck she was talking about.

ian and i workin it at oneills

anyway, the pub was super duper fun, i'm doin my thing, dancin to a live band, and out of the corner of my eye i spot a usc-er. two usc-ers in fact. i only recognized this kid because he would roll up shirtless and painted for a field hockey games in high school. i freaked out and went and said hi! they're studying at a near by university.
then, all the bucknell in london kids showed up where i ran into some freshman hall mates and some of mah sissssters hayy. it was crazy fun. we all danced for a long time!

court, ryan and i at oneills

two more things and then i'm done, i promise! so much for the short post!

sunday morning i woke up to what i thought was a "london is being bombed by the world" alarm which i quickly found out is just a regular fire drill. it's a constant screech instead of a intervaled one. i thought fire drills in america were bad. i was wrong.

 the thing about fire drills is, you do them your whole life, to the point where you practice realizing its not real. the idea of fires seems impossible. now your probably expecting me to say, well, this time it was for real. well, it wasn't. BUT it wasn't a drill...as I get out of bed and groggily walk down the stairs, i start to see water gushing through a flat door and what i thought was smoke (it was steam) coming from a door and the floor looking like it was about to collapse... me and my friend james bolted down the stairs, and outside. scary stuff! 

3 firetrucks and 4 hours later, we found out a pipe had burst and the floor was in fact on the verge of collapsing. somehow they fixed the floor and we were allowed back in around 2. so because QM rocks, we had free biscuits in the cafeteria, then we got a free lunch at "Pride of Asia" which in fact, shouldn't make Asia proud. but it was free, which is super duper for broke pajama clad college students.

fellow usc-ers watching the steelers game

lastly. steelernation. after losing lots of sleep from my firedrill. i still went out at 11:30 to watch the lers at the sports cafe in piccadilly circus. i ran into my high school friends i met the other night and met victor. i also ran into a childhood friend. i dont know if it's pittsburgh or london that's too small, or maybe people from my past can't get enough of me. regardless, the yinzers watched the game and were very excited to see pittsburgh make it to their 3rd superbowl in 5 years. city of champions i think so.

boat cruises and clive

Last week we went on a boat cruise around London through Queen Mary. It was just for international students and was sooooo sick. for those usc-ers reading this, it was real similar to senior cruise. Basically we just lapped big ben and the london eye a few times and danced to american music. exactly what I needed to get my dance party on. After the boat cruise, everyone went to the on campus bar-drapers, and chatted, the que (insert British word here) was 50 people out the door but once we got in we all had a rockin time.

victor and in london..reunited and it feels so good!

 

mad blurry pic of me and arden on the boat cruise

Ah also, sidenote, we all joined the gym, Qmotion, or as more trendy people like to call it, The Q. I've pumped iron every day because I had to pay to join the gym, not something i'm used to, but it's actually a good thing because then i really use it!! They also have a girls only part, which is awesome, so now, when we girls want to do our 20 min of elliptical and then stretch for half hour, we can't get made fun of! i'm gonna try to go alot beause with all the going out, they're gonna have to roll me on the airplane to come home!

this past weekend we went on a homestay to a litttle place on the english coast called "Herne Bay". it's about an hour away from london and is a little fishing village chalk full with a bunch of old, really nice British people. my friend miriam and i stayed with a husband and wife, clive and gwen, who were 75ish eyars old, they have 5 kids and like a billion grandkids

herne bay is right in betwen canterbury and dover

on friday night we chilled with clive and gwen and watched some english soap opera's and game shows.

herne bay hayyy

 on saturday we went to CANTERBURY, THE ALMOST SECOND MOST FAMOUS CITY IN ENGLAND. which is what our 90 year old tourguide, jill told us. ps i dont think jill is a real tourguide, she just lives in herne bay and does her thing.

but anyway, Canterbury was cool, it was so English looking. tiny little streets and a massive cathedral. also, castles out the wazoo.  i've figured out that in England you look down the street and it's basically, McDonald's, Starbucks, 11th century Roman Fort , Subway, dumpster,  gothic cathedral, cool. 

canterbury: subway, my friends, cathedral,

cathedral at canterbury, model shot

after our day in canterbury we went back to clive and gwen and had some tea. clive and gwen drink tea like 15x a day, so much for not believing in stereotypes. they made us toast for breakfast, butter and lettuce sandwiches for lunch, and egg on toast for dinner. carbo load to the extreme. bread, fried bread, and mince pies are what they eat on the reg, tryin to keep their cholesterol low.

finally, saturday night miriam and i hung out with our guys friends at their homestay home. we drank beer in the hot tub by the sea and listened to music.

chilly in our "dressing gowns" before the hot tub!

school school school

no more green suits or anything that crazy, but the last few days here have been jam packed with fun!
classes started here on monday. i only have classes 2 days a week. which i dont think has ever happened to  an engineer in the history of engineers. which makes me sort of important and cool. anyway, so i walked into my first class at 9 am mon morning and it made me miss my engineers. all the kids were talkin about their cool insiders, and laughing. and i just sat there by myself in my bright yellow jacket. its alright though, i quickly befriended a boy next to me. his name is gobbs. not sure if i befriended him cause i wanted a friend, or because his name is gobbs, but a new friend anyway.


my architecture class meets on wednesdays and it is super duper. it's 2 hours of lecture one week and the next week is a 2 hour tour of buildings in london. on wednesday, we're going to parliament and checking it out. basically my dream come true. again, the buildings in london are absolutely fantastic!

i'm also taking a french class, oui oui, parce que je te manque francais...and maybe in a few weeks that can actually be a proper sentence, we'll see...also, i just realized i said proper, which is what all these english people say, yikes! here comes the english accent!

sidenote: my camera is broken! i'm trying to figure out how to fix it but haven't been able to yet, rats! so no pictures for this entry.

also about my classes, havin classes 2 days a week is bomb ass, however, i'm a little concerned trying to occupy my free time! i'm just ognna read me some books and drink tea and explore london. it just seems like at home, everything is go go go, and it's so much more relaxed here.

Green Man in London?

Our first night at Queen Mary consisted of a traditional English dinner in the dining hall. We had stuffing and a bread pudding type of thing. Stuffing just doesn't do it for me :/ never been a fan, but they served Fosters at dinner. The beer was free and encouraged. I quickly realized I'm not in America anymore that's for sure. After dinner they had too much extra beer and our table had a few more cups. We started them and immediately got into a cup stacking competition with 2 other tables. Naturally, having the bright civil engineer ;), we won and got a free case of beer, two bottles of wine, and trophy! My new favorite school!

our championship team hard at work

living my pittsburgh dream

friday night was probably the most fun i've had so far. me and a kid on program, scott, who actually lives 2 min from me at home, go figure, can't go to far without findin a yinzer, steeler nationnnnn,went out with courtney and her friends. being the fashion icon that i am, we all went to a club and wore neon spandex body suits. obviously with my rockin bod i couldn't wait to get into my spandexy, neony green suit. i've never had an experience quite like that. we danced all night to respect, by aretha franklin, and weird music. fyi, no club can't handle me in london :/

me and scott in our suits

in our "whosuits"

The first day we got here we had meetings for orientation, then a couple of us went to a pub, The William Blake, and had traditional English food. I actually had nachos (love me some moes!), but some other people got real english stuff. We then went to the White Lion, which quickly became our favorite pub. The owner gave us free chocolate and mulled wine, some cinnamony, wine thing with spices. it was delicious! We played pool and darts and hung out all night.

Tuesday we had a scavenger hunt across London, it was really cool. We paired off into groups of 4 and went around the city. The first place we went was St. Paul's, which is the most breathtaking structure I've ever seen. Its amazing to me that the prince is getting married there. Again we went to the white lion, and enjoyed ordering our own drinks and taking everything in.

Yikes! I've arrived at my flat finally! After 3 days of orientation, scavenger hunting, and pubbing, today was the day we moved to Queen Mary. Of course it was the only day so far we've had of rain. Nothing like moving 100 lbs of luggage in the pouring rain. I've been hanging out with alot of Bucknell kids and with some other people I've met so far. Everyone is super duper nice! Once we got to our rooms we all went out to a big grocery store called Sainesbury's...soo british! We had to walk like 2 miles in the pouring rain to get there, then back with all of our stuff! So now i'm just unpacking! which i am horrible at, it takes me forever, so i'm gonna go my best to focus and get it all away!

The Adventure Begins...

So after two flights, 90 lbs of luggage, and no sleep, I've finally made it to London! Instantly I got on the wrong train, I took a direct train when I should have taken the slower one, however, Jose, the train guy, let me off easy because I was clearly a newbie. They warned us not to take so much luggage and I now understand why ;).I checked into my hotel and heard behind me the melodious tones of the Courtney Botazzi, soon to be followed by the  Emily Willig! It was super exciting to run into my old neighbors across the pond, and our reunion was spectacular. Courtney and Emily had to go to their orientation. Without anyone on my program here yet, I had intentions of napping, however, they warned me that it's an awful idea, and I need to just be tired for a day to adjust to the time difference. I then decided to go to a nearby internet cafe, to prove to my mother that I was in fact, alive and avoid the ever overwhelming desire to sleep. Oh man, we'll see how this goes. Yikes!