Been Home...

HEY THERE! It's been forever since I wrote in here, and I'm quite sure that no one is reading this anymore, but I will write in here none the less :)

So the parents came and we had fun. We left and I was home.

I can remember the feeling I had once I stepped foot in the good ol' USA again, it was weird. It was familiar, yet weird. I felt as though I hadn't actually left, which in turn, made me a little sad.

I've been home now for about 2 months, and I leave for the almighty ISU on Tuesday.

I miss Sweden sometimes, but most of all I miss the traveling, but I know that I will be returning eventually.

I should be sleeping right now, but I felt the urge to write....VERY strange for someone who dislikes the whole writing thing.

Just thought I'd write in here one last time, though, this isn't very informing in the least.

Well, for the last time, I bid you all Hej Da.

Lindsay

Valborg and My Birthday....

Hej Hej! Long time no update. Sorry about that, I get very focused on my procrastination.

So last time I posted was before Valborg, or the last day of April. It was very interesting. I hung out with my friend Lili from China the whole day. We met up, stupidly, at 9 in the morning, our goal being to grab a spot to see the boats go down the river....we waited for about an hour and a half, for nothing spectacular, but there were tons of people out and about. Since the boars weren't too exciting, we decided to do something else. Lili had to go to the bathroom, so we wen't to her
"apartment" (kinda, not really one) in Hotel Uppsala, in the center of town. We then walked around town, it was like the town exploded with people, it's the most crowded I've ever seen Uppsala. After walking around, we had lunch. We ended up buying strawberries, a must for the day, and we headed to the Main University Building were we listened to live classical music, choruses, and a skit that was in Swedish so I didn't get that much out of it. We ate half of our strawberries and found it time to go see the President of the University supposedly give a speech, but really only waved his hat from the main library...very anti-climatic. We ended up in the end, buying some ice cream for our strawberries, and sitting in front of one of the entrances to the cemetery, eating. The town was full of empty champaign bottles and garbage lying about.

The next Thursday I had my Swedish listening test. I think it went well for the most part, but the people talked so fast that it was difficult. I'm used to them slowing their speech down a little bit for the beginners, but they didn't. I have no clue how I did, nor do I know how to figure that out.

I turned 20 this past Tuesday and it was a lovely day. I opened the package that my parents sent me, and even skyped them before I went shopping with Jackie. We weren't very successful, but it was fun none the less. Stefan met up with us for dinner, which we had at MAX, not as "fancy" as my parents would've liked, but I can only have it for a limited time. Our goal was to see "How to train your dragon", but as it turned out, was in Swedish, not English like the internet told me. We ended up seeing "Kick-Ass", which was interesting... That night I skyped with my parents again.

I have my Swedish Written Test, my Swedish Ethnology Paper, and 3 more classes to attend before I can get distracted, but it's proving to be very hard, but just the paper writing part. Most of the time, writing a paper, to me, is like pulling teeth, so it requires motivation, which I seem to lack, much to my mother's dismay. I'm incredibly excited for my parents and Justin to be coming in 20 days! I am ready to come home :)

Well, there you have it, that's all that has happened that's noteworthy. Pray that I can get through these last 15 days of schooling!

Just some info: The sun starts rising at about 4 am and starts to set at 9:30pmish and dark by 10pm. That means 18 hours of sunlight! It's starting to screw with my mind!

Lindsay

Prague, Czech Republic...

My Oh My, I'm sorry for neglecting!

I've been back from Prague for a week! And I can tell you it was one of my favorite cities I've been to, probably second or third, London of course being number one, and will probably always be number one in my book, but I still love Prague.

The journey to Prague started way too early in the morning on Sunday. I got up at about 3:30am to meet everyone at the bus stop at 4:20. Stefan was running late, so he ended up riding his bike to the train station. We couldn't take the bus because on Sundays the bus doesn't start running until 6am. So we walked the 45 minutes to the train station, to supposedly get on a 5:15 train to Stockholm, but that was bad information, so we ended up waiting for a 5:45 train to Upplands Vasby then take another train to Stockholm, and then we took the hour and fifteen minute bus ride to Skavsta airport, not my favorite place. Everything was fine until we were on the plane and they told us something was wrong, so we stayed on the plane for another hour, until we were ready to go.

We FINALLY made it to Prague in the afternoon. I had 30 Euros left over from Italy, so I exchanged it for Czech Kroner, which has an amazing exchange rate at 18 Czech kroner to the dollar. Anyway, we hopped on the bus to the metro station, and of course, it was pouring out, but by the time we got off the metro, at Wenseslas Square, it was perfectly sunny. We made the mistake of going to a McDonald's for lunch which is very pricey in Europe because it's a luxury item. After we ate, we found our hostel, which was really close to the square so it was great. The Rosemary Hostel in Prague is awesome! Our room was 3 bunk beds and 2 beds up in a loft. We had a shower room and bath room, and our own kitchen. Thankfully, there was a computer with a printer, so I could print off my boarding pass to get back to Sweden. Nicki, Stefan, and Jackie took a nap since they'd been up for a long time, while I read on the couch, yes we had a leather couch.

When they decided to wake up, we found a Czech Restaurant, where I had goulash! It was very good. It was still early when we finished eating, so they tried to find a barish place, and we stumbled upon the Zombie bar, it was quite strange, and we were the only ones in there. We then retired to our room once again.

On Monday we wanted to take the free tour, but we ended up going in the exact opposite direction we needed to go to meet up with the tour guide, but thankfully there was a tour later on in the day, so we walked around and ended up finding a trolly to the top of a hill to climb an observation tower. Somehow I always end up paying money to climb stairs, and I don't really like that fact. I hated climbing, but the view was fantastic. It was almost time for the next tour to start, so we made our way to the Old Town Square where the meeting point was.

The tour guide, Ruth, was great, she was very energetic, and informative. The tour took 3 hours and I was happy to actually know things about the buildings I was taking pictures of.

Monday night the others wanted to do a Pub Crawl, and it was my job to make sure they got back in one piece. Well, I ended up getting everyone home at about 2:30, and I was exhausted and quickly fell asleep. And I surprised myself with knowing my way around this city already.

On Tuesday we all woke up late. Then we went back to the places we wanted to go, like the Jewish District and the Charles Bridge. We also made it up another big hill to the Castle and main Cathedral. This was filled with other amazing views. We pretty much just walked around all day and ended in another bar at night, where I had some awesome hot chocolate, mind you.

That's pretty much the whole trip in a nutshell. I'm sorry that it took me forever to write about it. It is an amazing city and I suggest it to everyone!

Other information: I'm done traveling until my parents get here. I am very okay with this because I feel as though I'm a little traveled out, and I would also like to spend some quality time here in Uppsala.

I think the volcano messed with our weather a little bit, seeing as though it snowed the past two days, I was not very thrilled at this, but it's supposed to get better now.

Next week is one of Sweden's holidays, I it's called Valborg ( go here for more information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walpurgis_Night), and my friend Lili and I are going to see what it's all about. Lili is in my Swedish class and she's from China, in case you were wondering. She's been giving me Chinese lessons during our 15 minute breaks in Swedish class.

I also have my last dino class tomorrow! I'm very excited to be done with the ever so boring weekends that consist of dino class.

Hope all is well..... 43 days until my family comes!

Hej då!

Lindsay

Milan and Genoa, Italy...

Hej Hej!

So all in all the Italy trip was good although our accommodation were less than stellar and it rained most of the time.

Our flight left on Wednesday afternoon from Arlanda Airport, and we flew right over the Alps! We arrived in Milan at about 6:30ish and was welcomed by nice warm weather. We then took the shuttle bus to Milano Centrale Station, which took about an hour. Upon arrival at the train staion, we had to find the Metro and figure out how to get to our hostel. We got there pretty quickly but when we got out of the metro, it took us a while to find it. Once we found it, however, we had to figure out how to get inside because it was a call thing on the sidewalk, but we eventually found out which number to call and we made it in. The hostel was horrid, at least for the first night. We got there at about 9:30pm, and we were starving! So we asked the guy where we could find some food at this time of night and he directed us towards a market where all we found was a bag of chocolate chip cookies and juice, to which I acquired an affinity towards Grape-Fruit juice. Anyway, the mattresses were abysmal, they sank into the floor, and they only gave us one thin blanket which made me extremely cold during the night. And the bathroom....it didn't have toilet paper the first night, so that was fantastic...

On Thursday we bought a 2 day metro pass and bought a map, one with all the tourist destinations. Our first stop was the Duomo, the Gothic Cathedral. Upon arrival, there was a tourist trap...although they were everywhere, this one was a guy who would put bird feed in your hands and have the pigeons ascend upon you, I was NOT happy about this, but I still have a few pictures from this incident. We went inside to find that they were having a service inside, given that it was Holy Week, and it was a surreal experience, being in an old Gothic Cathedral watching a Cardinal do his thing in Italian. Anyway, we found out that we could walk up to the roof, but Jackie failed to inform me that there was en elevator, so I walked up 240 steps to the top, and it was worth it, it was a beautiful sight, and thankfully it wasn't raining yet.

There is a shopping place, that's also on the map for tourist destinations, right next to the Duomo. We walked through it, it was filled with Designer stores and loads of people. There was ballet troupe that was out dancing promoting something, but I can't recall what exactly. After a gourmet meal at Burger King, we were going to go to where "The Last Supper" painting is. We got a little side tracked when we got out of the Metro, we meandered to an old looking building, which coincidentally was on the destination list. And after walking through the building we walked through a park that was next to it, and found another Arch, but unfortunately it was being repaired or something so it was covered in scaffolding.

We eventually made it to the place with "The Last Supper", sorry I don't know any names of things other than the Duomo, only to find out that you had to make a reservation to see it 2 weeks in advance, and they only allow 24 people to go in at a time. Even though we didn't get to see it, on the other side of the building there was an exhibit of other original Leo De Vinci works, so we saw that, and was pretty awesome. By this time, we were going way too fast through our tourist destinations, so Jackie said she wanted to take a nap. I, however, didn't want to take a nap, but I had nothing else to do in our room, so I asked if we could go to a bookstore that we found back by the Duomo, before we went back. As soon as we got to the book store, it looked like it was about to rain, so we quickly went inside and found the English books, thank the lord, and I ended up buying Harry Potter: And the Deathly Hallows. I figured it was a long book so I wouldn't finish it any time soon, plus it's the British version, which makes it even better! By the time I picked out my book and went back outside, it was pouring, so we quickly took our exit and made our way back to our hostel via the Milano metro system.

After Jackie's nap and my reading, we decided to find some grub. There was this section of the city that was suggested for good food, so we took the metro for about 30 minutes to get some authentic Italian Pizza. Again, I apologize about not remembering ANY names, as I forget the name of the Restaurant. The service was great, and we were seated, ordered, and done eating within a half an hour! Unfortunately, we were hoping it would take us longer than that, you know, to kill some time, but we went back to our room and I continued reading, and went to sleep early.

Friday was a lovely day, it didn't rain! Since we didn't want to exhaust our tourism, we let ourselves sleep in, and I fully appreciated this. Our first stop was to find some food, and guess what, we went back to the Duomo! That seemed to have become our main area. On the metro, I saw a sign that advertised an exhibit of Goya paintings and drawings, an artist I learned about in my art class last semester and really liked, his most well known painting is Saturn eating his children. So we tried to find that, it was supposed to be around the Duomo, but we passed it so we just decided to walk around Milan, and we did so for about 2 hours. I actually forget the exact details from this day, but we did end up finding the museum with Goya, and it was very good.

Saturday we left for Genoa. It wasn't a long train ride, only about an hour and a half, however, it was raining this day. It was pouring when we arrived in Genoa and we then spent the next 2 hours trying to find our B&B, and I suggest to everyone that you shouldn't stay in a B&B that you find alongside hostels. We eventually found it, it was the smallest sign I've ever seen for a place, and to make it even better, it was facing in the opposite direction form us. The problem after we found it is that you're supposed to call the person when you get there, however our phones don't work there, so we tried the pay phones, and guess what, those didn't work either! Suddenly, when I was about to just go find a nice hotel by the train station and I would pay for it, I was NOT going to spend the night homeless, the guy whose wife owns the place found us. Apparently he had been getting my calls, they just dropped after the initial ring. I was so relieved when he showed up! The place was right on the port, so the view was nice, but there was scaffolding blocking our window. So we dropped off our bags and we set off on our adventures in Genoa. We went to the center which isn't very big, but it's a port city so there were tents and touristy things. we walked all along the port and kept getting bombarded with people asking us if we wanted to buy an umbrella.

After loosing ourselves around the awesome old streets, we didn't know what else to do, so when I saw a tourism van, we jumped on. Thankfully we did this because we wouldn't have known what to do on Sunday. After the tour we went and got a great meal, and I actually had a glass of wine! Go me :)

Sunday, Easter, we woke up and began getting ready because we didn't know when we were supposed to be leaving, but when we were finishing our two rolls and orange juice breakfast, Maura, the owner, came scrambling in and told us we had to leave, basically ordering us out, thankfully we were ready. It wasn't a very fabulous place to be, but whatever, it was an experience. We took our cue from the previous day's tour and we went towards the mighty fountain in the center of town. We made our way to the shopping street, which unfortunately was mostly closed since it was not only a Sunday, but Easter no less.

We saw Christopher Columbus' house! That was really cool, since I pretty much owe him my whole life as I know it. We found some stairs that led up to a great view of the city, and we followed it to see if we could find the Mediterranean Sea, which we found after about an hour of walking, we found a beach, however it wasn't the cleanest beach, but a beach none the less. We sat there for about half an hour until we got too chilly and started to head back to the center of town. That took us a while, and when we made it back to the center, we thought we'd try and get to the Medieval Lighthouse that looked awesome, so we tried to take the bus. We ended up in a different town because the bus didn't actually pass it even romotley. So we were on the bus for about 2 hours and when we got off, it was time to go to the train station back to Milan.

That was pretty much it. I wish I had better weather and better accommodations, but what are you going to do?

I'm sorry this was a little overdue, I'm just a huge procrastinator!

I leave for Prague in about 7 hours or so, so I will let you know how it goes, hopefully sooner than this time.

Hope everyone had a lovely Easter :)

Lindsay

Italia...

Hej Hej!

So, tomorrow afternoon, my friend Jackie and I, are embarking on a trip to Milan and Genoa, Italy!

I did get a new camera so there WILL be pictures this time :)

Speaking of pictures, I got Kristen's pictures and I posted them at the shutterfly site that has a link on here, to the left. If you see two old people, that's Grandma and Grandpa Buck, VERY English people.

Tonight I signed up for my classes for Fall semester back at good o'l ISU. If you'd like, here's what I will be taking:

ANT-274: Principles of Archaeology

ANT 350- Principles of Paleoanthropology

ENG 143- Unity and Diversity in Language (yes, I know, I'm taking an English class,oh no, but it also is an anthropology class)

MUS 181.01- Marching Band

PHI 207- Indian Philosophy

SOA 212- Sociology of Death

I have my English Class on Mondays and Wednesdays from 2:00- 3:15, and I also have Marching Band on Mondays and Wednesdays from 4:00- 6:00

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have my remaining 4 classes in a row, with an hour break:

ANT 350- 9:35- 10:50

PHI 207- 11:00-12:15

ANT 274- 2:00- 3:15

SOA 212- 3:35- 4:50

And then I just have Marching Band on Fridays from 4:00-6:00.

In other news, last Saturday we FINALLY had our Day Light Savings Time, so I'm now back to being 7 hours ahead of you, and makes it harder to SKYPE my parentals.

I'll report back with story aplenty from Italia on probably Wednesday.

Ciao!

(The picture is a google image of Genoa, we'll be there for Easter :))

March...

Hej Hej!

Wow, it's only been about a week since I last updated, go me!

NOt much has happened in the last week or so, just been going to class and such. I bought a new camera so I you'll have many pictures from my upcoming adventures.

Information I do have:

I'm leaving from Milan, Italy on the 31st and staying there until the 4th. I'll be in a city called Genoa for Easter. Genoa is right on the Mediterranean Sea, and we're staying at a B&B, so it should be fun!

My next trip after that will be April 11th until the 15th in Prague, Czech Republic. It was between there and Amsterdam, but more people wanted to go to Prague and it was cheaper. I will be using Ryan Air again, but I'll just have to deal with it, the price was only $100 round trip, so I really can't complain.

Then I want to go to Ireland for my last hurrah and for my 20th Birthday, and I'm really excited.

Then I get to take tests and write papers the rest of May until my family arrives on June 5th.

Everyone at home is, or at least was, experiencing lovely Spring weather, however, I haven't had that yet. The snow is slowly melting down from the heaps it was, but it's creating awful slush and I'm not particularly fond of it, although I enjoy the warm 40*, yes 40* is warm here :) However, today we had another Blizzard, which I hope is the last of the season. By 2 this afternoon, we already had about 3 more inches of snow. It makes me want to leave for Italy now!

I register for my Fall semester classes on the 30th at 8:25pm my time, and I hope I get all the classes I want, but thankfully I'm all over with General Education classes. I will let you know what I'm taking when the time arrives.

Hope everyone is doing well :)

Happy Spring (kinda)!

Lindsay

London And Paris...

Hej Hej Everyone!

Sorry about the lack of updates recently. However, I'm here to tell you all about my trips to London and Paris :)

London:

We traveled through Ryan Air this time, so we had to get to a different airport called Skafsta. The problem with that is that we had to take a train into Stockholm then an hour and fifteen minute bus ride to the airport. Since we were worried about not getting there in time, we left at about 1:40 for our 9:40 flight. We ended up having about 5 hours to sit in the smallest airport I have ever seen. The entire trip went very smoothly, which was a great difference to the other trips. We arrived in London's Stansted Airport at about 10:50, but then we were then herded into a long immigration line that took us about an hour to get through. After we finally got through, we practically ran to catch the last shuttle to our hotel, The Days Inn, which we caught, thank goodness. We checked in and signed up for breakfast in the morning. The room was nice, much better than a hostel.

In the morning, it was raining, which made me a little sad, but it got better during the day. After we ate our breakfast, we got back on the shuttle to take us back to the airport. At the airport we found the train to take us downtown, which was about a half hour ride. We arrived at Liverpool Station at which we then proceeded to buy our Tube tickets for the day. Our destination was the British Museum, and after a few minutes trying to figure out how to get there with all the tube closings on Sunday. We made it easily to the British Museum but stopped before we got there to admire the parks around us. After about 2 hours or so, we started heading to a tube station. At the station, we saw directions to Charles Dickens' house, so we decided to find it. We made it to the street it told us to go to, but after we got to the street, we couldn't find it, we walked up and down the street for about a half hour until we finally found it, although we didn't go in. We then made our way back to the tube station and headed for Leicester Square. We were starving by this time and headed for some food. We ended up eating at KFC since Kristen wanted to. After sitting in there for about an hour and a half we just started walking. We made it to Piccadilly Circus and then down to St. James Park, which is right by Buckingham Palace. After walking around for a while, we decided to do our last thing for the day, we went to Kings Cross Station of Harry Potter fame. We took some pictures and then started to figure out how to get to our hosts' house, I shall refer to them as Grandma and Grandpa, or rather Liz and Robert Buck. We apparently took the long way round train which took us about an hour and a half, but G-ma and G-pa were very nice about it. They picked us up at Reading Central Station and then took us to dinner. Dinner was delicious and they made us get an appetizer, entree , and dessert. They are so incredibly nice! When we got to their house, which is beautiful, they showed us where we could sleep. There was one room with two twin beds and one with a big queen sized bed. Emily and Kristen took the one with the two twins and I got the other one since I would be waking up before them and making noise and such. And we also got our own bathroom, which I want. It was pink and white polk-a-dots, and oh so adorable.

On Monday, we decided to spend the day downtown again. In the morning, G-ma made us breakfast, and G-pa took us to the correct train station, Twyford, and sent us on our way. Our first stop in London was Notting Hill. I must say, that if I ever move to London, that would probably be my first choice, it's so pretty there. The weather was great too, at about 45*, I could take off my coat and be very comfortable. We came across Kensington Park/Gardens, which we walked around for a while, and Kristen and Emily tried to avoid the pigeons. When we were good to go, we left for the Tower of London. First stop: Pictures of the Tower Bridge. Before we went in, we had lunch outside on the steps, also trying to avoid the birds. The Tower of London was just as I remember it, cool. The crown jewels were pretty, and made me a little sick to think about how much money all of that cost, you could sell just one thing and feed a whole 3rd world country! After we were out, we decided to get ice cream since it was so nice outside, and then went ON the Tower Bridge. After another half hour, we made out way to Big Ben and Parliament. Lots of people just standing there. We were going to go inside West Minster Abbey, but we got there too late, so we decided to head over to Harrods. That store is so fancy, so we didn't spend much time there. We were trying to find a gift for G-ma and G-pa, however, we failed, so we headed back to Reading. We took the right train this time, and when G-pa picked us up, he got us fish and chips for dinner. IT WAS DELICIOUS! We were so tired by then, we planned the next day and then went to sleep.

On Tuesday we didn't go into the city, we went to Windsor and Oxford. G-pa drove us to Windsor, just 25 minutes away, and let us tour it for about 2 hours, then he drove us to the train station so we could get to Oxford. G-ma had, gratefully, packed us lunch so we could eat it on the train. We had to teach her how to make PB&J. Oxford is a great city, however we did start out in the wrong direction. However, we found a map and got onto the right course. We ventured into many school shops, where I bought an Oxford sweatshirt, and many other things....I could't resist on buying a messenger bag with the British flag on it. We saw a sign that said that the college in which they filmed the first Harry Potter was there, so we tried to find it. On our mission, we found many courtyards which we also ventured into. We ended up not being able to find the right college, we bi-passed it at some point, but that's okay. On the treck back, we thought about what we wanted to get G-ma and G-pa and it was the last chance we had. We stopped in front of a fudge shop where the person making it asked us if we wanted a fresh piece of it, and of course we said yes. So we decided to get them some fudge since G-ma has many signs in her kitchen that says she likes chocolate, for example, one of them says "7 days without chocolate makes one weak." We got back to G-ma and G-pa's earlier than usual, which is ok since she made us homemade Shepherds Pie and Tercel Tart (the favourtie dessert of Harry Potter..). Both were absolutely delicious. We used G-pa's computer to see what show we could make on Wednesday. G-ma said that if you go on the day of the performance, you can get really cheap tickets, so that's what we were going to try to do. We wanted a day performance, so we decided either Les Mis or The Lion King. We found out where the theaters were and then went to sleep.

On Wednesday we had to leave G-ma and G-pa. G-ma packed out lunch again. Our first stop was to see if we could get tickets. We put all our eggs in the Lion King basket, since Les Mis isn't really an uplifting show. We walked to the theater and they DID have tickets on the ground floor for only 20 pounds! We had about an hour and a half, so we went to St. Paul's Cathedral and Millennium Bridge. Then ate our lunch on the way back to the theater. The Lion King was filled with children, but it was a great show. We then tried to go see the Shakespear's Globe Theater, but we had bad information from G-pa, so we didn't get to see it. We then proceeded to the London Eye. We had about 5 minutes to get tickets and get on, so Emily and I ran. Kristen didn't want to go on it, so she waited for us on the ground. The city looks beautiful at night, and I am happy I decided to go on it again. After that it was time to head to the airport. Thankfully that airport is open 24 hours so it wasn't as terrible as Berlin.

I didn't try to sleep in the airport. I thought that if I tried to sleep and wasn't successful, I would feel more tired if I just stayed up, so I just read and listened to music. By the end, I walked around the airport seeing where we had to go once they posted where we could check in, and also where security was. Our plane took off at about 6 in the morning. I slept the whole way there, and I also slept on the bus back to Stockholm and the train ride home. So I was a little rested for my class at 4 that day. That night I didn't go to sleep early however, I played cards with Jackie and Stefan. It would make sense that I slept most of Friday. On Saturday I had my Dino class from 9 to 4 and again on Sunday. This didn't give me a long time to recover from London. On Monday, I had class that got out at 8pm, to which I went to bed straight afterwards since I had to get up at 3:50 to catch my 7am flight to Paris.

We had a taxi pick us up at 4:40 since the buses don't start until 5:15. We took the train to Arlanda airport and everything went smoothly. We only had to wait for about 45 minutes before we boarded. The flight was about 2 hours and when we arrived, we had to figure out how to get downtown. We eventually figured it out, thanks to the directions on the Hostel website. We made our way to the Vintage Hostel easily from Gard de Nord. Thankfully we were able to leave our luggage in the Hostel while we went out that day since we couldn't check in until 4. We were pointed, in the wrong direction may I add, to the nearest Metro station. The problem with being in France, is that it wasn't in English, so thankfully the man working near the ticket dispenser helped us, with his little English, and then another lady helped us also. I had very good interactions with the French while I was there which I was not expecting, and was a nice surprise.

Our first stop was the L'arc de Triumphe. However once we got to Champes Elysee, one of the main streets, lunch was necessary, so we went to McDonald's, THEY'RE EVERYWHERE! It was extremely busy there, but we managed to get our food rather quickly. Photo Ops were then taken from a distance, and while we were doing this, we saved a few Italians not get killed trying to cross the horrific trafficked street that goes around the Arc, by telling them to go underground. We decided to go to the top of the Arc, but what we didn't expect is that we had to walk up the 100 or so steps up to the top, but it was worth it. It was an amazing view with the Eiffel Tower. We watched the traffic beneath us for a while, wondering how they know when to go and when to stop for other cars, it's bewildering.

After the Arc, we did some window shopping on the Champes Elysee, with no luck. So then we went to the Eiffel Tower. One thing about the Paris metro is that it's not as clean as the Tube in London, and it's a little sketchier, AND it's a little more confusing. We spent most of the day at the Eiffel Tower. We went all the way up to the top, which was interesting because the others, Kylee, Emily, and Kristen, aren't particularly fond of heights. When we got down from the top, we went into the lawn that's in front of it and took many a picture. It was dinner time, so we went in search of a Cafe, and we were in luck because there was one that was amazing about 20 ft. from the Eiffel Tower. We ate for a while, eating takes a long time in Paris apparently. By the time we left, the Tower was lit up, and we waited for it to start sparkling. Once the sparkling happened, on the hour, we listened to Journey on Emily's phone, while dancing, it was quite the experience. It was then time to go back to the Hostel, check in, and go to sleep.

On Wednesday, we started off with going to see the Moulin Rouge. We decided to go during the day before it wasn't necessarily the best place to be at night. There was a crepe stand on the corner next to the Moulin Rouge, so I got a chocolate and banana crepe, however, I also seemed to order coconut, but it wasn't that bad. Next stop was the Louvre. It is an amazing building and we had a fun time just looking at it. When we finally made our way into the building, we were pleased to know that we could get in for free since we are E.U residents for at least 6 months! I saved 9.90 Euros! We were on a mission to find the Mona Lisa, which we did by getting a lost a few times. It was bigger than I imaged since people kept saying how small it was, I guess I would say I was pleasantly surprised. We also saw the Venus statue. Next was shopping on the Rue de Rivoli, another main street, but first, it was so nice outside, there was a lawn on the way out, so we laid down for a while, with the Eiffel Tower in the background, it was a cool experience. On the Rue de Rivoli is where I did my tourist shopping. I did buy coasters with classic art on them, I know it's a weird purchase, but they will go nicely in my apartment next semester :). After lunch at, again, McDonald's, we headed to Notre Dame. It is an imposing structure, however I've seen a lot of cathedrals in this short period of time, that I was a little underwhelmed. When we left, we tried to see if we could make it to Verssailles, however it closed at 6, and it was about 5 and it took 30 minutes to get there, so that was a no. We ended up getting directions to the main shopping mall, and we did a lot of shopping, being mostly disappointed. I was determined to buy something in Paris, and I eventually did. We ended up eating at another Restaurant, based just on the price, so we didn't know how good it was going to be, but it ended up being fine. It was then time to go back and sleep.

In the morning, we had our free breakfast at the Hostel, and went on our merry way to the airport. We got there in plenty of time, however, the security line took FOREVER! It's the longest I've ever waited to go through security, and they had to delay the flight since there were still some people going through it. I got through and went straight on the plane. The problem is that they only had one metal detector and people apparently have no clue how to go through security, so that took up a lot of time. I was a prepared flyer though, and once I got to the station, it took me all of 3 minutes to get through and on the plane. And again, once I got back, I had class at 4.

That night Jackie and I bought plane tickets to Milan and Genoa, Italy for the Easter weekend. I am looking very forward to this trip, and I hope the weather is warm. It's getting better here, however it's getting very slippery with the snow melting and then it freezing over night. I even slipped today on my way to get my laundry, my hand landed in the snow, and half of my body was soaked. I hope the snow goes away faster.

For 2 weeks, home will only be 6 hours behind me thanks to Daylight Savings Time. We don't change our clocks until the 28th, since there isn't much daylight to begin with.

Well, that's all for now. Again, I'm sorry for the lack of updates, but as you can tell, I've been pretty busy.

Hope you all are enjoying the warming!

Happy Spring!!

Lindsay