I've Arrived In Oxford!

So my first day in Oxford has been great but a bit of a blur.  I really need to get a good nights sleep.  But this city is fantastic and I look forward to the next few months here. Today we were given a tour and shown the city centre to get oriented.  Tomorrow we have more orientation sessions.  It’s a bit surreal being here (as cliché as that sounds).  One thing is today has been a bit of a blur with trying to take everything in and being so tired after a pretty restless flight.  It was easier to stay up all day than I thought it would be but I think that’s also a bit because of the excitement of being here.  I can tell I’m fading though.  

These next few months are going to have their challenges.  For example learning my way around the city and figuring out how to live with several people, and basically being with them all the time, for four months.  And on top of that there is balancing school work and fun, especially being in an environment like Oxford.  I want to experience life here and not be stuck in my room doing homework all the time.  I’m sure I’ll figure it all out.  It just might take a bit and it will take a lot of hard work and might be stressful at times.  But this is an experience that I am going to be so glad that I decided to do.  

This morning we landed in Heathrow and then took a bus straight to our houses and got assigned our flatmates and rooms.  I am on the top floor of one of the houses.  There aren’t a lot of people in this house, the other house has more but this is the one with the classroom.  The other one has a TV which will be really helpful Saturday nights.  I bet there are enough people who want to watch Doctor Who that we can take over that room to watch it! I hope so at least!  Anyway... After unloading we had some lunch and then had some time to unpack or rest before we went about town.  We split up into two smaller groups and we walked around to main places we need to know where are such as the grocery stores, exchange places, and a tour of the city.  After we finished the tour we were allowed to split up and explore ourselves.  I went with a group to a coffee shop and I got a scone and it was so good!  Afterwards we went walking in the University Parks.  They were super pretty and it was a lot of fun to walk in there.  After we went back to the houses for a bit and then decided to go get groceries at a nearby place.  It was really small but we had just walked back from the city centre and didn’t want to make that whole walk again.  Sometime we’ll go back and get more groceries.  Then we all went back to the houses.

The food situation will be a bit interesting because with the Bean we didn’t have to worry about going to the grocery store in order to eat.  We will have to here so that will be rather interesting having to provide all our own food.  I’m sure we’ll eat out a bit but mostly we’re going to save money and buy our own food.  I just got a couple things to hold me over for at least tomorrow morning and lunch so that I can go get more food later and maybe talk to my flatmate about how we’re going to do food.  There in one small kitchen on the top floor but the floor under us has a larger one which I will probably be using a bit.  In a way it’s good that there are only 4 of us on the top floor because if you have a lot of people sharing the bathroom and such would probably be a bit of a pain.  

Well I think it’ll be a great semester but for now I think I need a good long rest so I can have as much fun and have as many experiences as possible these next few days before class.  

Just a few more days...

I got back to school yesterday! I'll just spend a few days here doing pre-departure orientation stuff and hanging out with friends for a few days until I have to leave.  I was saying yesterday that I thought I wasn't so sad about leaving until I got here and it kinda sunk in.  I got here and I'm getting to see my friends and catch up, but it's only for a few short days and then I'm gone. And don't get me wrong, I can't wait! But I am really going to miss my friends.  I leave Wednesday which is unbelievably soon and will be here before I know it.  I ran into a friend yesterday who did the program last spring and told me that it's fantastic! And that's what I've heard from everyone. 

I just still don't know quite what to expect when I get there so I'm just going to have to go with it and figure a lot out especially when it comes to the living situation and then being in England on top of that! But I'm really excited about it and can't wait! Monday and Tuesday are pre-departure orientation days, so basically we get talked at all day.  I probably will post next when I'm in England. 

Doctor Who

September 1 is the first Saturday I'll be in England, and guess what...It's also Doctor Who Saturday!!! This is my first season of Doctor who that I'll actually get to start on time, and watch while everyone else does.  Hopefully that'll mean less spoilers because I knew about so much in seasons 4, 5, and 6 before I had seen it and it's kind of a bummer.  Basically I'm excited!  I mean I get to watch Doctor Who in England on BBC. Yes I'm a nerd but I love it!  I am so excited about this season and I think it's going to be fantastic!

Two Weeks!

So one of my dreams is to see Alexander Rybak is concert!  It's one of my favorite artist/musicians and I think it would be awesome to get to see him in concert.  I just think it would be a blast and he's so talented.  I've watched a lot of videos of him at concerts and they just seem amazing and I want to go to one so badly.  I looked into the possibility of going to one while I'm in Europe and it doesn't seem likely. There are none scheduled when I'll be out of class and can go and they're all pretty far away and wouldn't be the easiest places to get to even if I did have time to go.  So this trip doesn't seem like it's going to happen unless I get really lucky.  I mean really lucky.

I also started looking into other concerts I might be able to go to.  I listen to a lot of artist that don't usually get over to the States and if they do they're not anywhere close to me.  I've looked at concert schedules for Gaute Ormåsen (who is another favorite), Rudi Myntevik, and others, with no luck.

Yesterday was two weeks before I leave and head on England.  I'm super excited but at the same time it feels crazy that it's so soon.  Almost like I don't believe it.  But I can't wait!

I love the song Europe Skies by Alexander Rybak!  I've wanted to go to Europe for years and now I am!  In two weeks!

29 days!!!

I have 29 days!  29 days until I get on a plane and go to a place I've dreamed of going for ages...England!!! I just can't wait.  I've had to stop myself from packing on multiple occasions.  It's crazy to think it's so soon though.  I'm getting ready!  I've had some pre-departure assignments that I've been working on.  I really need to get on to that.  But yesterday I was actually working on it a bit.  Part of our pre-departure portfolio is making a travel itinerary for a weekend trip and a week trip.  I worked on both yesterday.

My weekend trip is the one I've been waiting years for.  About 4 years ago I got this obsession with Norway, and it hasn't gone away and probably has only gotten worse.  I've been wanted to go an planning ways to go and now finally I have my chance.  If all goes as plan (which it probably will) I will go to norway for my long weekend in September.  I wanted to go for a week but my week is in late November and I don't think it'd be easy to find someone willing to go with me that late...it gets a bit cold.  At least I'll get to spend a couple days in Oslo and get to go while it's still fall.  I can't wait!!! I'm sure I'll just be giddy fulfilling a dream I've had for basically over 4 1/2 years.

The reason I know how long it has been is because I have pin pointed about the time I became obsessed with Norway.  My freshmen year of high school my family and I took a trip to Disney World.  My favorite park has always been EPCOT and I've loved all the country pavilions.  (last time I went to Disney World I spent part or all of 5 of the 7 days I was there at EPCOT) But this particular time I was draw to the Norway Pavilion for some reason.  Well for some reason ever sense then I've been obsessed. So that's why I'm so excited about going!

That trip was easy but planning my week trip was going to be hard.  I went into planning this week trip thinking it'll be fun but I might not go on it and just go with someone else.  My dad suggested Switzerland and Austria and I like the sound of that so I started planning.  So I was planning the cities I might visit and decided I had to go to Prague because it's probably my number 3 city I want to visit in Europe so why not go up to Prague at the end of the trip.  So I was thinking start in Zurich and go to Salzburg, Vienna, and end up in Prague.  My mom said she loved Vienna and I'm sure I would to but for some reason researching it didn't make it sound that appealing.  I mean it would be cool to visit but I just wasn't that excited about it.  So I decided to look at other nearby cities and saw on the map Bratislava, Slovakia.  And now my heart is basically set on that! I researched a bit and decided it was my type of city.  It's not as touristy so it seems more like me. I think it would be a really neat experience because it's not something that a lot of people get a chance to do.  Most people go to France, Italy, Germany and I'd like to go to those places but there is something that draws me in a way to Bratislava.  So hopefully that might actually work out as long as I can find someone as crazy as me.  We will see but I hope that would work!

I will probably go to Paris on my other weekend off because it's kind of the place to go and I figure I should do that.  So we'll see.  I'll be taking French anyway.  I might get to practice!

The decision would be harder if I wasn't going to go to Spain on a class trip.  Our group is spending almost 2 weeks in Spain, which I'm so excited about!  I love Spanish and have wanted to go to Spain too!

Canada

So earlier this month I got to visit 3 more Canadian Provinces!  I had been to Canada twice before but both times I had visited British Colombia.  I love BC, but I've been wanted to visit other provinces for ages so this summer my family and I visited the other side of Canada!  We visited Quebec, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia.

Quebec
So when you go to BC it feels a bit like what you'd expect Canada to be like.  However the province of Quebec feels more foreign (sorry the only thing I can think of to describe it.)  For one they speak French.  I've grown up being told that French is the official language of Quebec.  It's not that I didn't believe it but when I got there and was a bit shocked by the fact they speak French.  I think, for me at least, it was just something that you have to really experience before it sets in.  Though I will be taking French next semester, I don't know much, at all.  And I really wasn't interested in trying out the few things I knew.  But luckily everyone spoke English too.  When I was younger I said that sometime I wanted to go to Quebec and learn French because I thought I'd really like it and would rather go their than at least France...but now I don't think that would have been a very good plan.  It would be hard to practice French is everyone speaks English and would probably rather communicate with you in English rather than listen to your attempts to speak French...but that might not be the case.  But that's beside the point.  I was expecting stop signs to say "arrêt/stop" and I maybe saw one or two like that (outside of a souvenir shop that is.)  And apparently in France the stop signs say "stop." The point is they speak French and it was really neat to be around the language.  It got me motivated to study it this fall.
Quebec is just a lot of fun to visit.  It is probably now my favorite province.  It is really pretty and just a fun place to visit with great people.  We actually spent the most time in Quebec.  We spent two and a half days in Montreal before boarding the cruise. Then we spent a day in Quebec City.

                                                                             Old Montreal

We stayed in Old Montreal.  It the gorgeous! The old streets are beautiful and it is close to the Old Port.  Nearby was the Notre-Dame basilica as well.  Rue St Paul (I believe) had a lot of fun shops.  There were a lot of souvenir shops as well (but those can be fun too.)  It wasn't too far of a walk to a metro station.  We got three day passes and used them to visit the Biodome of Montreal and an underground shopping mall.
The Biodome is pretty cool! It's the old Olympic venue from the '76 Olympic Games and transformed into an attraction with different ecosystems and environments such as the rainforest or the arctic.  And nearby there were the botanical gardens and they were beautiful!

The Olympic Stadium (Biodome) 

(not to be confused with the biosphere)

We spent a lot of time in Old Montreal seeing the sights and such.  There were also some really good places to eat.  There are some things I wish we could have done.  We did the Biodome but there is another attraction in Montreal called the Biosphere and we didn't get the chance to go that.  I wish we would have stayed at the botanical gardens longer because they were really awesome, but they were also really big, and we were really tired.  I would love to see more of the city if I ever go and have more time.  And I would also like to go to Cirque du Soleil since it was started in Montreal, but it's expensive and we didn't think of it earlier.  There was also a big jazz fest that we missed out on.  Montreal was a lot of fun, but that was just the beginning of our Canadian adventure.

Chateau Frontenac 

Quebec City! Now Montreal is cool and fun, but Quebec City is more for me.  It is beautiful, more French, and picturesque.  The Chateau Frontenac, a hotel, is a predominate building in the skyline of the city.  It is beautiful inside and out.  Quebec City was our first stop o the cruise.  That morning we were greeted by this beautiful building outside our window.  It was a Sunday so it was pretty quiet when we first disembarked and started roaming the streets.  A lot of shops were closed for the day but we still found plenty to see and do.  We walked around getting a feel of the town on our way up the hill to the Chateau Frontenac.  We went inside and got a glimpse of the public areas.  Then we continued walking to the citadel.  We went to the Citadel but we didn't take the tour because it was an hour long and we didn't have that much time and didn't care that much to do it.  So we continued walking and found a street with a lot of shops so we went through some of them.  We also visited the Notre-Dame of Quebec City.  I love visiting old churches! They are so pretty and so full of history.  We wanted to go to the Musée de la civilisation but we ran out of time.  We heard it was really cool so it was a bit of a bummer that we missed out.  But Quebec City is a place I definitely would visit again. 

After that we left Quebec and moved on to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.  PEI is a beautiful province and is very rural.  The largest city is Charlottetown and it has less than 35,000 people.  The 10th largest city has 678 residents.  For being the smallest province PEI has had a big impact.  This province is the birthplace of the confederation of Canada, the home of Anne of Green Gables, and famous for red dirt, Cow's ice cream, and beautiful, highly sought after, property. 

I have never read Anne of Green Gables but being in PEI made me wish I had.  There was an excursion to go to the farm where it was based which is about 30 minutes outside of Charlottetown (I think). 

Cow's ice cream is really, really good.  It is ice cream made in PEI and there are 10 stores throughout Canada, but 6 of them are in PEI.  It is a must to go to Cow's.  It's good, trust me.  If you ever go to PEI, go to Cow's. 

There were a few very pretty churches here we also visited.  

One of the things I did here, which may start a tradition, is I bought local yarn.  I had bought some baby alpaca yarn in Peru, but hadn't ever gotten a chance to do much with it.  I had wanted a t-shirt but I got yarn instead.  It is great yarn and I got it for a really good price.  The point is I'm going to use some of the yarn to make a hat and it's going to in some way represent PEI.  I am going to write PEI on it and have some designs on it, haven't quite decided though.  I'm also making a scarf.  That's cooler than you're old cheep t-shirt.  

A few hours isn't really long enough to experience a city, but soon we were moving on to Nova Scotia. 

My family (back in the 1600s) passed through Nova Scotia before coming to the colonies that now make up the United States.  My great-great-great (etc.) grandfather is buried somewhere in Nova Scotia, but we don't know where.  They didn't stay long in Nova Scotia, a few years later we headed south but I was excited to visit Nova Scotia. 

Our first stop in Nova Scotia was the beautiful town of Sydney on Cape Breton!  It might not be the best of the stops but we had a lot of fun in Sydney.  Out where we docked there is a giant violin! We walked around a found an old church called St. Patrick's.  It wasn't like other cathedrals we had seen in big cities like Montreal and Quebec City, but it was still really neat to visit.  It was old and small, and the roof was made out of the hull of a ship.  There were some neat stuff inside the small museum.  After exploring a bit to see what we were going to do next, we discovered a craft sale going on at a nearby church.  There were a lot of really cool stuff for sale but I was there mostly to look.  But I also got to talk to some people which was really cool! We later shopped a bit more and walked around the pier. I bought a scarf of the tartan of Nova Scotia, partly because of my connection with the province.  And I like Scottish stuff, and tartans are Scottish.  

Our final stop in Canada was Halifax, Nova Scotia.  It was a very historical town but to be honest it was quite depressing.  We went to a museum that was mostly about the Titanic and the Halifax Explosion.  Halifax has a big connection with the Titanic because after the ship wreak, the groups that went out to collect the victim's bodies were from Halifax and many victims were buried in 3 of Halifax's cemeteries.  We didn't visit the cemeteries though,  we thought about it, but they were a bit far away and we didn't have much time.  

Prior to visiting Halifax I didn't know about the Halifax Explosion.  Basically in 1917 a French cargo ship carrying explosives collided with a Norwegian ship carrying relief supplies outside of Halifax.  The cargo ship later caught on fire and exploded in the harbor destroying building.  It was the biggest manmade explosion before the atomic bomb.  It devastated the city killing about 2000 people.  I heard that the clock tower in Halifax has one side that was stopped by the explosion and they keep it stuck on 9:05, the time of the explosion.  We didn't look for it though, we should have.  We did see a watch at the museum that was stuck on 9:05.  

It was a pretty depressing town to be honest.  I think everyone in my family agreed that it was our least favorite.  It was a nice place to visit but maybe not a top place for us to visit again. 

I guess what I've learned from this Canada trip is do everything and don't complain about being too tired, because we were tired so we would just sit or go back to the boat and we missed some things we didn't have to.  So that is a bit disappointing.  But Canada was a lot of fun to visit! I love Canada!  And now I've been to 4 provinces and my goal is to go to all of them!  A lot of people from where I live don't really go to Canada but I think it's really worth a visit even though it's pretty far away.  It's really cool! 

Now I wrote a lot, and I'm not going to proof read because I'd rather go watch the Olympics. And I don't proof read on this blog. Sorry.  But I hope you enjoyed this post! I've been procrastinating on it for a while.  I will hopefully post a couple more times before I go to Europe.  

Peru 2009

In June of 2009 my dad and I went to Peru!  It was my first time out of the country (other than a day trip to Canada) so I should say it was my first big trip out of the states.  We went for a mission trip with a group from my church and one of my best friends in the world also went with her dad.  We spend most of our week and a half in Cusco. 

Cusco

I love this city!  It is absolutely beautiful and full of Quechuan culture and history.  Cusco was originally an Incan city so there is a lot of Incan (or Quechua) influence.  There are ancient walls that are still standing despite earthquakes and the Spanish conquest.  Actually we were told that the Spanish tried to knock the walls down but they were too strong so they just built right on top of them.  This is beautifully illustrated by the Temple of the Sun or Qorikancha.  

We stayed in a hotel not far away from the Plaza de Armas.  The plaza is beautiful and I enjoyed visiting it often.  There are several nice restaurants and they aren't American chain restaurants.  There is a McDonald's and now a Starbucks but they aren't flashy and at least the McDonald's is pretty hidden.  While Lima is littered with chain restaurants.  I love how Cusco is so Peruvian.  It is fantastic.  There is a really cool museum inside Qorikancha and there is one close by about Peruvian textiles that I wish I would have gone to, but unfortunately we ran out of time.  Another thing I would suggest is going down to the art market but also visiting the local mercados (markets.)  There is some great fruit and bread that you can buy really cheaply and going to a mercado is also an experience in itself. 

There is a lot too see in Cusco and one way is looking at the city from above.  The above picture is the Plaza de Armas taken from above the city at the Cristo Blanco.  The Cristo Blanco is a bit like Cristo Redentor down in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  It is a big white statue of Christ overlooking the city.  The view from up there is breathtaking.

Cusco is a fantastic city and one of my favorites.  Many tourist pass through this city to get to another one of my favorite places on the planet.  

Machu Picchu

There is me at Machu Picchu.  No one knows from sure what the purpose of this beautiful place but one thing is for sure.  The Incas were genius architects.  Walking around that city is just amazing and all the detail that went into it is fascinating.  The crazy thing is how they got all those rocks to that mountain ridge.  The Incas didn't even have a wheel to help them.  We were at Machu Picchu on one of the nicest days possible but normally it's pretty cloudy and even rainy.  But the Incan people had discovered ingenious ways to drain the water so their city didn't get washed away.  They also left a gaps where they didn't place buildings because they knew that's where the fault line is.  That is one reason the city has lasted this long.  Machu Picchu is an incredible place and I definitely recommend it to anyone and want to go again so badly. 

I absolutely love Peru and would love to go back.  Maybe someday I will return to Cusco and maybe even Machu Picchu!