Murphy's Law

Five Fun Facts
5. Berlin does not translate to "little bear," it translates to swamp. Anyone who tells you differently is lying.
4. Stockholm has a bus called Tanto, and it makes you want to sing "Jump on it!"
3. Amsterdam isn't all about drugs or sex. If you're mute.
2. Athens has rainy weather approximately 7% of the year.
1. I leave Harlaxton in 19 days and 20 hours.

Let me tell you a little something about old Murph.

When you go to England for four months, he makes sure KU plays North Carolina and wins.
When you pack a pair of shorts and a skirt to go to Greece, he makes sure it rains two out of three days.
When you aren't exactly as responsible as you could have been about a paper you have to turn in, he makes sure your internet breaks.
When you don't stop to look around, he makes sure time flies.

Holy shit, batman. In the past three weekends, I've seen Berlin, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Athens. Four completely different, completely amazing places. This would be the definition of going out with a bang. I saw the hotel where, as our wonderful guide Donald pointed out, Michael Jackson did what any rational person would do in his situation... shake his baby out the window. I learned in Stockholm that it's a very poor decision to eat ice cream when the wind is blowing in off the sea and you can't feel your fingers. In Amsterdam, I... did not visit the Red Light District, eat any sort of "special" baked goods, or even come close to touching anything organic. And in Athens, I saw more stray dogs than I thought could possibly ever exist and plotted ways to fit them all into my carryon.

I've come to the conclusion that when you get right down to it, this whole thing is a big lesson in priorities. You can't see everything everywhere you go, but you can see enough to learn what's important. How you choose what's important is what makes you different from the person standing next to you. What you would do with a day is completely different than what anyone else would do with that same day, and that's what makes that day so damn special.

Well, I Guess That's One Way To Do It

Top 5 Ways to Learn About Yourself
5. Take a 2 hour skiing lesson and then take off down the Swiss Alps without a guide.
4. Break up a fight between rogue 12-year-old futbol fans and questionably mature 20-year-old guys.
3. Jump in a waterfall in March.
2. Find ways to entertain yourself on a 6-hour coach ride without being destructive.
1. Climb up to the very top of St. Paul's Cathedral on a spindly spiral staircase.

I'm a big enough person to admit that keeping up on this is not one of my strong points. Dave and Courtney, please don't kill me. Anyway, some words of advice... don't waste your time going to Stonehenge until they renovate everything around it in about 10 years. If you've ever seen Eddie Izzard, and if you haven't you should go youtube him immediately, Stonehenge is supposed to be an "aaaahhhhh ahhhhhhhhh ahhhhhhhhhhhh" place, not a "boop doop diddily boop" place. There's a highway right next to it, for cheez-itz sake. Kinda hard to be awe-inspiring when you've got semis and smartcars in the background of all your pictures.

The last two weeks have been a cross between the X-Games, Man vs. Wild, and Dumb & Dumber. In Switzerland, we skied down from our lesson to this little town where the train station was, which was incredible and incredibly terrifying. You don't really know the meaning of "in over my head" until you're... in over your head. And then almost as soon as we got back, we went BACK up the mountain with a huge tour group to go sledding in the middle of the night, which could have been a giant disaster. And then last weekend, we went on the college trip to the Lake District for horseback riding, kayaking, and ghyll scrambling (aka hauling your ass up a waterfall-ing). It was all well and good until we woke up Saturday morning to an overcast, hurricane-force wind and on-and-off rain kind of day. What better day to stuff yourself in a plastic kayak and tool paddle across a lake before strapping on a helmet and climbing up a freezing cold waterfall or two! But like usual, life is what you make it... so we complained for awhile and then we went swimming.

I think it's hard to say what study abroad is really about.
As I sit here avoiding three term papers, a take home test, and an economics essay, I can definitely say it's about academics. I could tell you more about architecture, the European Union and Victorian paintings than you could ever want to know, but is that what it's all about?

I've seen more of Europe these past two and a half months than most people I know have seen in their entire lives. I've climbed waterfalls, catapulted myself down mountains, almost been hit by several double decker buses, and learned to use public transportation AND maps AND at least three different kinds of currency. I've seen Loch Ness, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, and Stonehenge. I own a Cambridge hoodie and an Oxford t-shirt. I've taken so many pictures that my computer is refusing to run any faster than the speed of sloth.

And then there's these things my mom likes to call "character builders." I am a character builder magnet. An ATM at King's Cross ate my debit card. The exchange rate is about 2-1. I almost missed our flight home from Paris. I ate an entire flaming hot pizza by myself and everything tasted like rubber for a week. We lost a basketball game by 67 points and started with a 30-point handicap. A friend I grew up with left us too early and the only people who understood were 4000 miles away. And somehow, miraculously, the sun is still rising and setting. I'm still here.

Whoever said "it's not about the destination, it's about the journey" had it right. And as hard as it is to imagine Baldwin City, Kansas ever coming close to comparing to Harlaxton, the biggest thing this castle could ever teach me is to open my eyes. Wake up and appreciate where you are- if not because of where you are, then just because you got the chance to wake up.

Lessons Learned

Top 5 Ways to Entertain Yourself While Sleeping in an Airport
5. Achmed the Dead Terrorist
4. Jim Gaffigan's Hot Pocket routine
3. Burger King french fries
2. Harry Potter books
1. Puke stories ["My mom found me eating it by the handful when I was about four... what can I say, I loved macaroni and cheese!"]

So, it's been awhile. And in the meantime I've seen a guy get his head split open at a soccer game, witnessed a fight on O'Connell Street in Dublin, touched the Eiffel Tower, stood on the edge of a cliff, cried myself to sleep, and laughed until five in the morning. It's amazing how much growing up you do when you least expect it.

Two weekends ago we slept in our first airport on the way to Ireland for four days. At first, the novelty overrides the extreme sucktasticness, but you get more and more annoyed by cleaning ladies and armed guards as the night goes on. Sure, the first time they ask for your ticket and passport it's kind of fun, like "oh man, I totally must look like a hobo!"... but that wears off, believe it or not, and you just want to tell them to stick their machine gun where the sun don't shine and wake me up when it's check-in time.

What's funny is that it's so easy to get really frustrated and tired and stressed and just want to go home, regardless of the fact that you're in beautiful foreign country having the time of your life. Sometimes you just need a slap in the face. On our last night in Paris, we really wanted to see the Eiffel Tower lit up... so we hopped on the metro at 10:30 at night [three girls, probably not the best idea] and walked up into a huge, dark square with people everywhere. And we're looking and looking and looking and thinking okay, it's the Eiffel Tower, how hard can it be to find? Just when we're about to give up, we turn a corner and get a [much-needed] giant, lit up Eiffel Tower-sized slap in the face. And we sat there, open-mouthed, wide-eyed, staring at this beautiful skyline and this beautiful tower that we thought we'd maybe only ever see in pictures... and it hit me in that second that I was in PARIS, real Paris, not Paris, Texas, not Paris anywhere else, Paris FRANCE. I was half a world away from everything familiar and I was alive and dressed and fed and showered and completely capable of functioning without anyone holding my hand.

And I could have stayed there all night, because it was a damn good feeling.

Homesick

I haven't really been homesick yet.

I mean I miss it, but I haven't been clawing at the door/running screaming down the drive looking for a plane. And then today came. When horrible things happen, you want to be with people you know. You want to be around familiar things, even if you're curled up in the fetal position with your eyes closed. You don't want to be completely alone, surrounded by [basically] strangers, 4000 miles away from anyone who's going through the same thing.

But regardless of what you want, sometimes you find yourself across the Atlantic stuck with those [basically] strangers. And sometimes those [basically] strangers can surprise you.

"You may not be able to see your friends back home, but you have your friends here."

And as much as I've been ranting on and on about the wonderful place I'm living in, maybe I haven't ranted enough about the wonderful people I'm living with.

[end emo-ness]

Prawn Cocktail

Top 3 Things Not to Do When Looking for a Club and Wearing Heels at Night in London:
1. Let a guy lead.
2. Wear heels.
3. Let a guy lead.

London was spectacular. What's even more spectacular is that in one and a half days I walked half of it and mastered the underground. Baldwin needs public transportation. Hell, Baker needs public transportation. That walk from Zeta to Mabee sucks in the rain. I'd walk three miles underground to avoid it but that's just me. Westminster Abbey and Big Ben [the bell, NOT the clock] and Buckingham palace are real places that exist outside of books. Who knew. The guards really don't smile and the people on the train really do smell. The food really is wretched and the portions really are smaller. A large pizza is smaller than our medium. And you pay twice as much for it. Talk about feeling taken advantage of, I went back to the hotel and showered with my wallet.

[F-bombs will follow, don't say I didn't warn you.]
It's amazing how without putting yourself out as an American people still judge you. I mean this in the nicest way, sort of, but I understand when you've got a gaggle of drunk girls talking three octaves too loud stumbling down the street, then yeah, fuckin' Americans. But when you're walking down the street, minding your own business, not squinting at a map or taking pictures or blocking the sidewalk or wearing an American flag like a cape or even talking, and someone shoulders past you and grumbles "fuckin' Americans," you just want to turn to them and say "yeah, I happen to be a 'fuckin' American,' what about it?"

I brought this up in our hotel, and a guy responded with "so you've never heard someone say that about a Mexican person or a Chinese person back home?" And it's a valid point. But maybe it's just being on the other side of it, maybe it's being completely removed from home for the first time for a LONG time, but it feels deeper than that. Not belittling Mexican or Chinese people or whoever else, but you walk down a street in London and you see every kind of person speaking every kind of language, and yet some d-bag picks out the American? That's deeper than skin color. You could be white, black, purple, polka dotted, or invisible... still a fuckin' American. Now if this is some far-removed bitterness from the Mayflower, stuff it up your nose, Brits. But we're breeding a generation [or two or three] of people who hate us for us, and we're not going to realize it until it's too late.

But for now, honestly. I'm a 19-year-old from a podunk town in Kansas trying to find my way around Europe without my mommy and [hopefully] without pissing too many people off. Cut me some slack.
[End of f-bombs.]

Happy to report that they're not all jerks. Some guy at the crisp machine [yes, crisp, not a chip, a chip is a french fry, a crisp is a chip...] saw us debating over the flavors and offered to share a bag. Roast chicken, smoky bacon, cheddar and onion, salt and vinegar, prawn cocktail... you name it, they've got it. We stood around eating out of each others' bags for a few minutes before he came to his senses and looked up and said "Hey, this is a little weird." We all went our separate ways and I doubt I'll ever see him again, but he will live in infamy as the Crisp Man.

Prawn cocktail is damn good, if you were wondering. Sweet but not too sweet.
And we never did find that club.

Bloody Hell

#1 Worst Thing You Could Possibly Do Days Before Leaving for a Semester Abroad:
Get sick.

Turns out doctors can't tell sinus infections and mono apart, and I have the bruise on my arm from the blood test to prove it. I must look like an addict (I've been getting the strange looks to prove it, although if they're staring at my arm am I really the odd one?). It also turns out that England, being cold and damp and dark as it is, is NOT a great place to get well again. Go figure.

The food here is about as bad as they warn you and then some. If I can survive on bananas and mini boxes of cereal from town I should have a fighting chance. I actually find myself dreaming of pizza rolls. I planned to have my last wonderful dose of American Chinese food in the Chicago airport, but there were no crab rangoon and I violently oppose all things egg roll, so Crab Rangoon's Last Stand will have to wait til April. If I'm still alive.

Really, I'm only complaining because I sound like a frog and my nose is auditioning to be the next Niagara Falls.

The exchange rate is much worse in person than in theory. It's one thing to whine about having to pay nearly double for everything, it's quite another to actually fork it over. Pound coins are deceptively small, so small that you don't realize you're paying $1.97 for a shot of purple vodka in a paper tube. There's a coin for nearly every denomination you can think of, I wouldn't be surprised in the least to come across a "3 and a half pence" coin one of these days.

Addendum to the "Things Not to Say" list: trash can. I got laughed right out of the convenience store. Trash BIN. Bin bin bin.

But all things aside, and whatever it took to get here, I am in England. I go to class in a castle with giant chandeliers and spiraling staircases and painted ceilings and ridiculously gaudy golden everythings. My professors have accents and actually enjoy tea and refer to America's formation as "that time when those ungrateful people broke from the mainland."

This morning I debated tying a sweatshirt around my neck and brandishing a pen like a wand.
Harry Potter fans, I've found Hogwarts. Only better, because Harlaxton is real.

What Not To Do

Top 4 Things To Avoid Before Studying Abroad
1. The movie Hostel.
2. YouTube videos of people getting pickpocketed.
3. Animal Planet- I'm already poor, and now I want a puppy.
4. Kansas City. I don't think there's any other place more capable of making you feel completely incapable of finding your way around.

It took me three days to unpack my stuff from Baker.
And now I get to take it all back out and shove it into two 62" suitcases weighing no more than 50 pounds.

Worst advice ever: "Lay out everything you want to take and then put half of it back."

What if I don't want to put half of it back? What if I like being overprepared?
I did laundry about three times last semester (slight exaggeration). That is not conducive to "putting half of it back."

And you know what else sucks? You can take a carryon and a personal item OUT of the States, but you can only bring ONE back in. Cruel and unusual punishment?

Two weeks til d-day.