Lady of Leisure

Now, let's try to catch up the blogosphere on my life since I have returned stateside.

The first few days back were surreal. I was very very jet lagged and I didn't fully get over it for about a month, because I didn't really try. Christmas was awesome, I got to give everyone their presents and see all my cousins and aunts and uncles and it was so nice just to be able to sit around in PJs and watch Home Alone and A Christmas Story while sipping on hot chocolate. I even got presents from Santa - which I thought since "Santa" dropped about $4000 on me over four months that I would get a package of socks and a gas card, so that was a nice surprise.

It was also nice to snuggle unapologetically and have some male attention!!! I missed it. I learned how to flirt in England because I never had to flirt here. I'm not very good at it, though. I never got anyone to buy my drinks. Unless it was Waner, who didn't count. He bought me drinks for proofreading his papers.

Let's see . . . my birthday was fun as well! I got Wii Fit. (trying to tell me something, mother?) Which is AWESOME. The bird flapping game is bomb.com. Then I was taken out to Dooley's and got a ton of free drinks. I kind of milked the system for about a week. Good thing, because at that point I had $153.13 in my bank account. No shame. I also got a new hookah from Dan that I named Abu.

New Years was laid back, we went to Alex's house, played beer pong, smoked hookah, chased Peter the Fat Cat. It was fun. I got drunk dialed about 4 times by Mary which was delightful!!

Hmmm. The month of January consisted of me literally staying up till 4am, sleeping till noon, running (yes, I know, WOW), eating, reading, watching movies, and having no job. I sat on Facebook a lot. I became a very accomplished creeper. I missed England a lot. Too much. Still do. Drank and smoked. Which is bad, I know, but really, when you're bored and all your friends and family have lives, what do you do? (after I read all my books, watched all my movies, hung out with people that could hang out, etc.)

FINALLY I got my old job back in February and had something to fill my time. And my wallet.

And that's pretty much where my life is right now.

Last night with my pals. . . night at Heathrow

The flight back to the UK was uneventful, I think I sat by Daryn? and, shocker, he didn't really talk, so I just slept. We flew into Gatwick, collected our luggage and got on the coach to Heathrow which is where most of us were flying out of. OF COURSE, when we got to Heathrow, my luggage from Harlaxton wasn't on the right truck, so they had to unload the ENTIRE other truck that had Italy 2's luggage on it and mine was in the very back corner. Only me. Perpetually awkward.

So after that fiasco we decided to find a place to camp out, and we found the other 30 people who had the same idea so we made a large camp on the side of a big hallway. Alex and I got coffee and food, had a picnic with Courtney and Lord Kitten, and then hung out with some people. Eventually Danielle and I helped Alex load up all of her stuff and we went to the other terminal with her (this was at about 4am), so by the time we got back from that it was about 5 so I decided to start getting ready for the day. I changed, brushed my teeth, got hot chocolate with Katie, and waited around with Waner after check-in until it was time to board. Waner and I had a deep convo like we always do, it was nice. When it was time to board we waited in line all together, and Katie got searched :). Luckily this time I was seated next to people I knew, so me and Jake were seat buddies instead of an old fat man. At this point I had been up 24 hours with only a few short naps. I did sleep a little bit on the plane, but only the equivalent of about an hour. I watched The Office and Bandslam, and then before I knew it we were landing in CHICAGO!

Customs was a breeze. The guy looked at my card, said "Okay", and I got to go through. For some reason I thought it was going to be a really long walk to Arrivals, but it was only a few feet. And then I was tackled by my sister and I looked up and there was Mom, Dad, Dan and Katie! It was so great to see all of them, I was so dazed and tired and happy that I don't remember much of those first few moments of seeing them besides my mom sobbing in the corner and my dad just holding my hand really tight.

I couldn't really sleep on the car ride back because I was just so excited, they hadn't had a chance to hear about Italy or my last night at Harlaxton so I told them all about it, and then of course we made the customary stop at the Kalamazoo Arby's because it is THE BEST ARBY'S IN THE WORLD, so that was my first meal back in the US!

The weather was awful on the drive back, and I got a text from Mary saying that hers and Chris's flight was delayed because of it, and then Alex was stranded at Heathrow because her flight was canceled! I was so thankful that I was home safe, but I was also thankful that at least the three of them weren't all alone, that there were plenty of our other friends who couldn't make it back on time either. They all made it back well before Christmas so that was awesome!

The night I got home I gave out a few presents, and then of course me and Katie and Dan and my dad had a few beers. I stayed up really late - I think we counted I'd been up for more or less 38 hours. Jet lag was not my friend the next few days.

So that concludes my European adventure, the rest of my blogs will not be nearly as exciting and I apologize in advance for the dullness!

Venice, the last trip with my Harlaxton friends

So, if I remember correctly, we left Florence pretty early the next morning, and hopped on the coach to Venice. It was a pretty long coach ride, but sort of relaxing after the craziness of Florence. It got WAY colder - I think it was about 30 degrees. Our hotel in Venice seemed shady at first- it was down an alleyway! - but it was pretty nice. Once again the boys had a huge, awesome room so that was the hang out place. The first night, once again we got there fairly late so we walked around a bit, saw some sights, ate a good meal and then bought cheap boxed wine and sat around and hung out. I think we really just wanted to spend quality time together because we knew this was literally our last hurrah - no more gallivanting around Europe together, being stupid, blowing money, having a blast.

The next morning we set off for Murano Island to look at some glass stuff! Venice, as you may know, is a city of canals, and no one is kidding when they tell you that there are no cars there. To get from place to place, you walk or you take a boat. So the "bus" to Murano Island was a boat. All of us crowded onto it and disembarked at the island. We stopped in a bunch of glass shops, and I found some glass animals just like Judy (my cousin Jordyn's glass dog) so I bought some!

Then we went to dinner at a tiny little restaurant and we had delicious spaghetti and a LOT of wine . . . I think a bunch of us were quite tipsy. Mandie started speaking as if she couldn't say her R's and I pretended I had a lisp and we performed Italian transactions with these speech impediments. We went to the glass museum, Alex stepped on and off a Venetian boat that was docked, and then we made our way back to the bus. The rest of the day I think we just walked around more, ate dinner, then bought more wine and went back to the hotel and started partying at about 6:00pm because it was our last night and still had most of the day the next day to see the remainder of Venice. That night was funny - we watched the Office, got drunk, sang ridiculous 90's songs, and went to bed fairly early.

The next morning we packed up and dropped our luggage off at a shady hotel for storage for the day, then it was time for a gondola ride! This was awesome - although it was freezing. Team Brown Bear and Team Black Bear split up (Team Black Bear rules) and so in our gondola it was me, Alex, Jeff, Cramer, Waner and Danielle. The gondolier was really funny, and we felt like we were going to tip over every time we went under a bridge. He told us a lot of cool things about the history of the city. I have video of it but I have yet to edit it because I am a slacker. After that some people headed over to San Marco but a few of us didn't feel like it, so me, Alex and Danielle just sat in a coffee shop for a long time where it was WARM until it was time to go.

Then we had the long trek across the city to the real bus stop, over the huge bridge and off to the airport. Our flight was delayed so we had to wait a while, but we finally boarded and were on our way back to the U.K.

The next post will be the last about my European adventure, detailing the wonderful night staying in Heathrow airport and the long flight back and then ARRIVAL STATESIDE!

Firenze and Pisa

We left Rome at about 1:30 or so on Sunday, after all the churchies went to St. Peter's and I slept in gloriously late and hung out in the train station. That morning me, Mandie, Danielle and Alex had a beer at 10am because we had nothing to do. The guy working at the place thought we were hilarious and he ID'd us. The coach ride to Florence wasn't bad, although it got progressively colder. The hotel was MUCH better than Rome, but it smelled worse. At least we had a real shower. The first night we went out and had a great dinner, wine, and partied at the hotel.

The next morning we went to see Brunelleschi's Duomo, which Danielle and I felt very cultured knowing the history of from Beth Plummer's class. The paintings on the inside of the dome were insanely awesome and dirty and terrifying. We climbed up to the very top and got a panoramic view of Florence, and we could see the Medici Palace! There were a ton of steps and it was painful, but worth it.

After that, we had lunch and hopped on the train to Pisa. We ran into Taylor, Lacey and Zac at the station which was cool! Of course, the leaning tower is all the way across the entire freaking city, so it pretty much took longer to walk across Pisa than it took to ride the train there. However, it was so fun to see it! We took the compulsory cheesy "I'm holding up the tower" photos, got gelato, and got on the train to go back to Florence. That night after dinner we walked to Italy 2's hotel, which was about thirty thousand times nicer than ours, and hung out with everyone there as a last 'hurrah'. I was sad, it was my last time hanging out with Katie :( except at Heathrow of course. We walked back to the hotel after we all got kicked out, and just went to bed.

The next day we hit up the museums, we saw some Giottos and Ghibertis, and then - THE DAVID. Nothing, nothing, nothing could have prepared me to see that. It is unreal. I had always imagined it as being maybe slightly larger than life-size, but it is HUGE. About 20 ft tall. I stared at it for about twenty minutes and took illegal photos over Chris's shoulder. Unbelievable.

That night we met up with Collin Graw, who was studying with LTU in Florence. He took us to an American-ish bar in which we had giant burgers, a beer tower, and fries. It was delicious and hilarious to be in such an American place in the middle of Italy. After four days of nothing but pizza, pasta and gelato, it was a welcome variation.

Florence was great, and the next day it was off to our last hurrah - Venezia!

Rome - still retroactively

I'm ridiculous. I did nothing for about a month and I still couldn't manage to keep up on this. And now that I actually have things to do, of course I'm going to procrastinate and update.

Italy. I was ridiculously tired, obviously. I passed out on the coach almost immediately, but woke up when Kingsley got on the PA and screamed about how we were supposed to get off the coach about an hour before we even got to Heathrow. Then, once we disembarked, we had to listen to a speech about how to do passport check-in after months of traveling in Europe. Annoyance. I passed out sitting up in a chair. Luckily I was surrounded by strapping boys that hopefully would have fought for me had someone attempted to mug me. Meaning Daniel and Waner so maybe not. Anyway, the flight was fine, I sat by Cesilie and we talked about how crappy Politics is and how Ripple almost made her throw up.

It was a real fiasco getting off the bus in Rome, we blocked traffic and got honked at. The hotel. OH MY LORD IN HEAVEN Alex and I were in a renovated closet. The beds were cots that were an inch apart. A creepy picture of Mona Lisa was on the wall. The ceiling was partially open and you could see the duct work. There was no shower; however in the bathroom there was a shower head and a drain on the floor, so you could pee ands shower at the same time. The boys' room was AWESOME (by comparison), so I showered in there. Oh, and on the second morning Alex's bed collapsed.

Rome itself was fantastic though. The first night we bought wine and watched Superbad because it was pretty late by the time we got there. The next day we went to Vatican City, St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican Museum . . . I saw the Sistine Chapel and took illegal photos in there! Yes, that makes me a badass, in case you were wondering. We then made our way to the Spanish Steps - me being uneducated I don't really know why they are important. However, they are beautiful. And full of men dressed up in Roman warrior costumes asking 10 Euro for a photo with them. We made our way to the Trevi Fountain, ate gelato, and made our way back to the hotel to get ready for the Colosseum Pub Crawl. (Yes, I went on the Colosseum Pub Crawl before I even went to the Colosseum.)

That was awesome. I wore the purple tights, so of course it was a great night. 20 Euro got us a t-shirt, free drinks for an hour at the first bar, pizza, and a shot at every subsequent bar. Honestly, the T-shirt was the best part. I love it so much. Anyway, we met some Australians and Andy got some Australian ass. I was pretty drunk by the time we left that place, and at the second place I had the shot and two beers so I was fairly incoherent. However, I went over the edge when I took my first ever shot of absinthe. Needless to say, I do not remember the rest of the night. I vaguely remember Alex getting on KB's shoulders as we walked to another bar, crowding on the bus, and me yelling "I'm a badass" about 25 times. I don't think I was really that sloppy, just incapable of knowing what I was doing. I woke up in my bed in pajamas and I had brushed my teeth and put my hair up, so at least while I am blackout drunk I still have excellent personal hygiene skills.

The next morning I found out that Andy made out with the Australian chick for about an hour and got so drunk he started throwing up, so Chris and Mandie took care of him. I guess he almost puked in a cab and the cab driver pushed him out. And then he locked himself in the bathroom and they had to get the manager of the hotel to come and get him out. And then he walked out of the bathroom at about 4am and said, "Hey guys, I thought we were going to party tonight?" to which Chris yelled back, "ANDY THE PARTY ENDED THREE HOURS AGO!!"

The next morning, surprisingly, I felt fine. We went to the Colosseum which was so great. We hung out there and just talked for about two hours, it was so crazy to think of everything that had happened there. There are lots of cats that live there, and if I was a cat I can't think of a better place to live than the Colosseum. Besides maybe with me. After the Colosseum we made our way to the Palatino which was, again, gorgeous. There were some great views of the city. We signed a lime and threw it down into the ruins for some reasons. We just wanted to leave our mark.

More gelato as we made our way to the Pantheon. That was beautiful. Daniel fell asleep there cuddling the Marmot, it was precious. If I remember correctly, we took it easy that night since we were leaving for Florence in the AM.