Homeward Bound

It seems absolutely surreal that I am hopping on a plane tomorrow to go home.

My last 24 hours in London were very relaxed, but a perfect way to end the trip. To celebrate my last day in Parliament Leah and I grabbed tea with Dulcie. I sadly handed in my awesome Parliament security pass, then I came home and got ready to go out for the night with Amanda, Teal, Tom, and Spencer. If you ask me it was the perfect last night in London. We went to Waxy O’Conners, the same place as last weekend, in addition to Tiger Tiger, which ended up exceeding our expectations based on previous visits.


This morning Amanda and I took the morning slow, getting our stuff together in preparation for our flights tomorrow. We made the sad realization that our flights leave from different terminals, so we won’t get to hang out in the airport tomorrow like we originally planned :( After everything was sorted we took the tube down to Southwark and explored the Borough Market, which is an AMAZING food market. It had everything from raw ingredients to full meals and desserts. It was incredible, and we literally had to walk away so we wouldn’t eat our weight in food.


From the market we headed over to the Imperial War Museum; since the beginning of the trip we had been hearing about how amazing it was, so naturally we had to explore and see for ourselves. It definitely lived up to its reputation, and we spent hours there looking at all their exhibits. Our favorites were the ones about British children in WWII, the Holocaust, and International War Crime.


Ever since we got back to the flat we’ve been taking an easy night because our taxi arrives to get us at 6 in the morning, and we need to pack and clean up the flat before we leave. It was sad saying goodbye to Teal and Tory, who were two other girls on our program. It is amazing at how fast time passes when you're having fun.

So looking back on the trip, I made some realizations. Don’t get too excited because they’re not incredibly deep, but I’m sure you all would ask me at some point anyways so I’ll jump the bullet and answer them here:

“Would you ever want to move to London?”: Don’t know. Honestly, I love the city, but this whole being 8 time zones away from everyone I love thing hasn’t been easy for me. And to think this has just been 10 weeks, not a permanent move. I guess I will see where life takes me, but I have definitely loved living in London, and the UK as a whole.

“What did you learn on the trip?”: Well, first and foremost, the UK is a LOT more different than the US than I originally thought. Just because we speak the same language does not mean we have the same culture. It is interesting because most English people are pretty well tuned into American culture, but not vice versa. Having British friends from outside of the program has made this even more evident to me, and I am super thankful to all of them for opening my eyes and letting me into their world.

“Will you miss London?”: Most definitely. I will not miss steaming hot tube commutes, rude people shoving me around, and being called judged based off of my accent (which I will still argue is non-existent, but that is besides the point). On the other hand, I will deeply miss living with Amanda, my awesome internship, and literally living in the center of one of the biggest, liveliest cities in the world. I literally could not have been more lucky.

I am still having a hard time fathoming that at this moment tomorrow, I will most likely be hopping out of the car, hot dog in hand (or stomach), and running into my house in Stockton. You all probably don’t know how much I have missed all of your smiling faces, and how excited I am to see them in person again.

Thank you for following my blog, and making me feel special for the past couple of months! Make sure you shoot me a call or text tomorrow after 1:35pm PST, because I will be dying to talk to you all! Sending lots of last minute love from across the pond, one last time!

Did you know...

...the reason why the London Underground is set up the way it is? Well, I did not until last night. Apparently the reason why the lines do not cross over certain sections of the city is because they are amongst the catacombs from the Plague! Because there is so much fear of the Plauge coming back, and out of respect of course, the Underground was built specifically to avoid these areas. Think about that one next time your train gets stuck between stations...

My past couple of days have been dominated by doing laundry, finishing my research paper, and packing to come home! Seeing my suitcase with all my clothes in it is making it feel so much closer, and real. I am now mentally starting to switch gears to think past London, and am making plans with friends at home and arranging things for Washington DC. For those of you who don't have a Facebook I found out on Tuesday that I got a paid internship for the fall, so I am really excited about that! I also spent a lot of time online shopping for my room in DC while I was procrastinating on my paper (typical), so now all I have to figure out when I get to DC is the whole "school" thing.

The last couple of days at my internship have been really enjoyable as well. Because of the recess there is no more parliamentary TV, so we have been watching "Friends", "Made in Chelsea", and a lot of other random daytime TV as we do our work. I am so glad my coworker Leah is here with me, otherwise I would be so bored! We have also been enjoying mini-adventures during lunchtime, and have been battling each other on sporcle quizes when we have absolutely run out of things to do. I will definitely miss her!

Tomorrow is my last free day in London, and then I will be back home! Can't wait to see you all SO soon!!!

A British Invasion

For those of you who have been religiously following my blog, I'm sure you are all well aware of who my friend Peter is (to jog your memory just in case... British friend I met through Lauren, took me camping the first weekend I arrived and on a pub crawl in his hometown before he moved to Geneva, generally awesome bloak). Anyways this weekend Peter came back to visit London, so we had the honor of hanging out with him and his friends for our last weekend in the UK.

Peter didn't arrive until later on Friday night, so pretty much right after he came we rounded up the troops and headed down to Soho to enjoy the nightlife. We decided to follow Spencer's lead since he has lived in London for a while, which ended up as a slight failure because we ended up in this tiny "club" (that was more like a basement actually) that played medicore music. It was fine though because we were still having fun hanging out with each other. After a bit we ended up leaving in search of finding a better place, but ended up walking home and just crashing instead (although none of us were too upset with that plan).

Saturday morning we woke up relatively early and headed to Notting Hill to check out the Portobello Road market. It was insanely large and had stands full of antiques, food, and everything in between. I had a delicious goat cheese sandwich (nom nom nom), and had a bite of Amanda's nutella crepe. I'm pretty sure we didn't even get to see the entire market, but it was still awesome.


By the time we were done at the market Pete had to run off to meet his parents for tea and Amanda needed to do some work on her papers for class (fail), so Spencer and I were left to figure out what we should do for the afternoon. We decided to go to Oxford Circus to check out some shops and meander around and enjoy the nice weather (it was sunny and nice all weekend, so we definitely wanted to take advantage of it). We had so much fun walking around that we ended up walking all the way back to my flat instead of taking the tube. It was cool seeing what I whiz by underground every day on my way to work.

When Peter returned from tea (with his sister Georgina in tow), we hung out at our flat for a bit, and enjoyed the view from our roof -- it was nice, and definitely made Amanda and I miss our flat 10 friends (since we frequented the roof with them). We quickly got ready and headed out to Waxy O'Conners, a ridiculous bar/dancing place off of Picadilly Circus. I say ridiculous because the music ranged from the Backstreet Boys, to the Macarena, and Irish jig music, and back again. The interior of this bar was very cool as well because it looked like you were in the middle of a tree! Everyone was legitimately disappointed at how early this place closed because we were having so much fun and didn't want to leave! The rest of the night was spent wandering around Leicester Square seeing if we wanted to go anywhere else (which we didn't), grabbing pizza and watching a ridiculous street fight, and running after taxis in order to get home.


We slept for a whole 4 hours before waking up to say goodbye to Georgina and Spencer, and heading to Oxford Circus to do a little shopping, and ultimatly go to Hyde Park. We spent the majority of the day laying in the sun enjoying lemonade and talking. Tom also tried making a "kite", aka a plastic bag tied to string, that quickly turned into his "pet dog" named Nigel Baggins. Needless to say we got some funny looks from passer-bys as the four of us were talking to and playing with a plastic bag.


After we had enough time outside we decided to head over to Liverpool Street to show Peter the Spitalfields Market, and east London in general. It was so funny to Amanda and I the entire weekend because more often than not we were the London experts compared to our British friends. Anyways, our main destination was Brick Lane, because the boys love curry and Amanda and I had been DYING to grab Indian food since arriving here, and we were running out of opportunities to do so. We ended up finding a restaurant that costed £10 for a 4 course meal, including drinks. SCORE. It was delicious, and I was so full I could barely move by the end of the meal.


After dinner we hopped off the tube at St. Paul's Cathedral, since Peter had never been before, and took a walk around before heading down Fleet Street to meet up with some of Peter's friends from uni. Some of London's oldest pubs are located on that street so I thought it would be a fun place to hang out and grab a drink. Turns out though that no pubs are open on Sundays... who would have thought? (Read: Al fail). So we ended up wandering around looking for open places, realized there were none, and bid Peter's friends adieu and headed home. Of course as soon as we set off to go home we found a pub that was open so Peter, Tom, and I stopped to have a drink before heading back to the flat. It was so much fun getting to see Peter and crew for the weekend, and I am really bummed that he had to go back to Geneva. Stupid work.

Even though it is Monday, it seems like the weekend still hasn't stopped for me. Today at work was very low key, and tonight we saw Chicago! We found an amazing deal online that got us dinner at a nice restaurant in Leicester Square and show tickets for £20 (where tickets usually start at £30 at least... score!) so we were pumped. The show itself was amazing too, and starred Christie Brinkley (who is 57, but still the lead in the show! Amazing!). I'm definitely going to have those songs stuck in my head for quite some time now.


Since it is officially Tuesday in London, I now have less than 5 full days left in the UK. Now the countdown can be reduced to one hand! Who's excited? ;)

PS. Happy Birthday Mom! Love you <3