:''''''''''(

Had a fun and happy but oh-so-sad night in Brighton last night. Jenny and I went out to the pub and met with Ally, Ant, Alex, and Tom for one last bit of fun. Then the four of us (- Ant and Alex) headed over to a different pub up the street to meet Rob and some friends. But on the way there the best thing in the world happened, we decided to stop in a few different news agents and buy a ton of candy that I haven't tried yet. YUM WHAT A BRILLIANT IDEA! Such fun, I'm really going to miss Brighton and everyone in it! I'm not ready to say goodbyeeeeeeeeeeee boohoo.

Today finished up at Topman and said super depressing goodbyes to Ramzy and Jenny, both of whom I MISS ALREADY! (I can't wait to go home and pig out on cheeseburgers in your honor, guys!). And when I got home Frankie was waiting to take me to her favorite special pub. We walked passed Kate Moss' house and there were 4 paparazzi outside, crazy! Anyway, we met Ihab there later and this pub was amazing, it was the poshest pub I've ever been in and I had the most amazing meal and it was just so nice of Frankie!

I'M NOT READY TO SAY GOODBYE!
I DON'T WANT MY ENGLAND ADVENTURE TO END TOMORROW/TODAY TECHNICALLY I GUESS!
But I guess that just means it's the beginning of my SUMMER '09 AMERICA TIME adventure, right?!?! YEAH!

The Last Supper HAHAHA I'M ONLY JOKING

No it really was my last Sunday in England and Jenny and I spent it out and about having an amazing time in London going from markets to galleries and all over the place. At the end of the day we headed back to Frankie's where we along with Frankie and Ihab had a picnic outside her flat with amazing food and just a fun time as usual.

Ihab told me today that he thought I was going to write about how he snuck chilis in the salad (he said he didn't want the chili to be lonely in the fridge.), so there you go, I thought they were tomatoes and just about died when I ate them.

The Most Adverb Adjective Few Days Ever!

Last week Mary Ellen and Alex came to England for a visit! It was so much fun and a wonderful reunion although we missed all our other friends from home :(

Friday Meo and I wandered around London doing some hard core shopping and sight seeing. We also saw the Ukrainian national football team walking along Oxford street, COOL!


Saturday Alex arrived and the three of us spent time wandering around London and eating delicious cakes and foods before heading over to Wembley Stadium to see the friendly match between England and Slovakia. IT WAS A BLAST! The atmosphere was incredible! The singing and chanting pretty much never stopped. Anddd there were something like 85,200 people there. Alex and I had spectacular seats, I wish Mary Ellen were near us though! Oh and England 4 - Slovakia 0. Scores by Heskey, Rooney (x2), and Lampard. NICE! After the game we headed back to Frankie's for some cakes and insanely delicious food, Thanks Frankie and Ihab!



The next day we spent also in London doing more shopping and eating and exploring. And after that we headed back to Brighton for a day of fun! We did more shopping, had cakes with Ally and Alex at Choccy Woccy, ate traditional pub food, and relaxed along the beach. Brighton pier was really fun and the day was gorgeous so we had a great time sitting on the rocky beach and inventing "games" of therowing rocks into the water and then throwing rocks into other rocks to make them bounce in to the water. Being in Europe is making me realize how fun throwing rocks is, seriously.

After an exhaustingly fun day we all ate more delicious foods and walked along Brighton and up the hills to look at the pretty houses before packing. Meo went back to Belgium and Alex and I jetted off to Barcelona. More on that soon!

THANKS ALEX AND MARY ELLEN FOR VISITING ME I HAD THE BEST TIME EVER!

Yesterday was a class trip to London to see the Changing Face Of Letterpress show at the London College of Communications that our letterpress technician, Rose had work in. But since we weren't supposed to meet until 3pm, Jenny and I decided to go get a full day's worth of entertainment in London!

We took a train up to London and went straight to the Natural History Museum. It was great!!!! So many animals! There were some weird ones that I couldn't possibly believe were real unless they were in a museum.... some looked like pokemon, some had the spindliest legs ever and I don't know how they could walk on them... it was great! We also saw tons of dinosaur bones and fossils, as well as a giant huge baby fetus in a dark room that was incredibly frightening...

After the museum, we went to go to LCC to find the gallery show. We eventually got there and saw a few of our classmates and our two teachers there, as well as Rose who's work was amazingggg!!! The show was really nice to see, lots of beautiful work, and it makes me want to get back in the lettepress studio back at Brighton and make stuff! We got a little tour of the gallery show and then looked around before getting a tour of their actual letterpress studio at LCC, which is HUGE! It was niceeeee and big and pretty. Then, since it was an open day (kind of like "experience mcad" days), Jenny and I figured we'd take the opportunity to go exploring around the school. It was really confusing but we had a good time seeing what it would have been like if we applied there instead of Brighton.

By then it was about 5 and we decided that since we spent money on our train tickets up to London we were going to make our trip worth the money and not just go back home. Sooo we decided to see a play/musical! Off we went on the good old tube till we found ourselves in London's west end and theater district. We ended up seeing Sunset Boulevard (the musical) at The Comedy Theater. But after we bought our tickets we had about 2 hours of free time to kill, so what else would we posibly do other than find doughnuts and smoothies for ourselves!?! As we wandered in search of a good smoothie, we passed Fortnum and Mason, an incredible store which I had visited with Sam a few days before. And I just knew that it was something Jenny needed to see and something I needed to see again. So we went in and basically were in heaven the entire time. I treated myself to a giant blood-orange macaroon which I ate on the train ride home. Yummmm. Then we found this nice little place called Cilantro Cafe that had smoothies so we went in and got ourselves smoothies AND A GIANT CHOCOLATE MACAROON which basically made my life complete. Beyond delicious. Then we found a doughnut place and headed back to the theater.

sunset Boulevard was great! I only knew a little bit about the plot because it's my dad's favorite movie but I'd never seen it before so I was so excited to see it and then tell my dadddd yayyyy! The storyline was reallllllly great and the main character is FIERCE AND INSANE AND MENTAL IN SUCH A COMPELLINGLY GREAT WAY! I really enjoyed it. The theater was really nice and tiny and old and beautiful too.

Then at the end of our journey we caught the train and made it back to Brighton by midnight. Another splendid day in London!

Train Time Giggle Fest!

These last few days involved Jenny and I welcoming our good old mcad buddies Ben and Zach to England as they decided to stop on by for a visit since they are studying in Ireland at the moment.

Tons of fun ensued, including:
- Going out for Millie's lovely birthday and having a good time before with Rob and Joe at some new bar place.
- The 6 of us going to Digital to meet Millie & friends and having the fun flashing-lights-fog-machine-stay-out-till-3-club experience.
- Day tripping up to London
- SHOPPING. Hello, topman! Hello, Primark. Hello, cheap deals and bargains!
- The best chocolate covered Belgian waffles in the WORLD.
- Big Ben, House of Parliament, London Eye, fancy bridge thing at night
- Sherlock Holmes pub time
- 12:30 am train back to Brighton complete with pokemon and sims talk/giggle fest/laugh-so-hard-I-cried time
- Doughnut factory
- Trip to Brighton Pier
- British tv/Jumangi/ping pong time in the common room
- Delicious Sunday Roast with Rob's welcoming and lovely family
- Sunshine
- Thai food
- Snooper's Paradise
- More time at the Great Eastern with friends talking and having fun

SUCH A GOOD LAST FEW DAYS. Can't wait to go visit Ben & Zach & the rest of the Ireland crew in a few weeks!

London Day Trip January 25, 2009

I LOVE LONDON!

What an eventful day Jenny, Ally and I had today! I woke up at 7:15 ish and got to the train station by 9, when we discovered that the direct train to London from Brighton was being worked on so we would have to take a bus to the Three Bridges station that would essentially add about an hour and a half to our trip. Oh and it was all rainyyyyyy and dark which kinda made the day start off on a shaky feeling because of the train and the rain and whatnot. So we eventually make it to London only to discover that the line we need to take on the tube is also down!!!! So we were kind of hoping this wasn't some sort of horrible omen, hah. Luckily it wasn't! :D

Anyway, so we started our day at the V&A museum which is ENORMOUS and amazing and we barely got to spend any time there for how big it is, so I can not wait to go back and spend the entire day there sometime soon. While there though, I did get to see some of my absolute favorite things ever like creepy doughy-faced, rosy-cheeked gold leafed religious babies in paintings, lush Islamic pattern and art, and Eastern European "peasant" textiles. LOVE IT!

After getting a nice taste of a lot of what the V&A had to offer, we went to meet Ally's wonderful brother Nathan at this absolutely scrumptious dim sum restaurant called Ping Pong. Let me tell you I was never really sure about dim sum or what it was really or if it would be good but it was GREAT! We ordered so much food and all of it was just mouthwatering! And I had blackberry lemonade, how much better does it get? Not much. But it was nice to get off our feet and talk and get to know Ally's brother who's got a really interesting life!

After the dim sum we were going to walk to the ginormous Topshop but as we were walking we went passed the store Liberty's where Ally's brother works and so we said we needed to go in and he needed to give us a quick tour. So we did and he did! IT IS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! Apparently it is the building that is the biggest fire hazard in London because it's made out of all wood. Anddddd, that wood came from two old battle ships or something, one of which was called the Liberty. Not only is it gorgeous from the outside but it's honestly like nothing I've ever seen before on the inside. It almost felt museum-esque because it feels really open and old and beautiful and things are displayed so nicely and in little cabinets and it is just incredible! Not to mention the clothes are just amazing, full of big designer stuff, I was drooooooling over all the See by Chloe stuff, it was great!

So then we finally made it to the huge 3 story Topshop and spent some more time drooling over great but expensive clothes. Way cheaper than Liberty's but still once you convert the pound to the dollar everything I wanted was just a little too pricey. I will definitely have to go back and just spend a whole day doing some serious shopping, it will be great!!!!

After Topshop Nathan was nice enough to give the three of us a ride over to the Tate Modern as we were running low on time. The Tate was huge, and honestly felt a little cold and kind of... intimidating at least on the first floor. It wasn't what I was expecting! But it was really lovely and huge and full of nice art! I saw some interesting things but it is another place I just got a taste of and I will have to come back to really see everything!

Next we went to go meet Ally's friend Corine in Camden for dinner before Ally's friend Tim's band was going to play in a pub in Camden. So we took the tube (after taking a slight detour to see the Globe theater and I saw the same pizza express restaurant I ate at with my family 3 years ago, AWWWW! hahah) and arrived in Camden and met Ally's friend who is super nice and fun just like everyone else here so far! We decided to go eat at Wagamamas which is so so tasty! I was really proud of myself because I was able to finish the entire huge plate of food whereas last time I ate there I could barely make a dent! God I love food. Anyway after Wagamama's we said goodbye to Corine and went across the street to Ally's favorite cocktail bar place to meet her friend before his gig. And of course while there I got oddly stared at and then subsequently hit on I guess in such a weird and creepy and uncomfortable way by another drunk creeper to add to the list of many. Anyway so we talked there for a while and then headed over to the pub where the gig was at and spent a little while longer there before realizing that we were all exhausted and if we wanted to make it back to Brighton tonight we'd have to leave at 9:30 ish so we stayed for a while and then headed out. We finally made it back to Brighton at about 11:45 and it was just such a fun day in London, I LOVE THAT CITY, seriously something about it just feels so good to me and I can't wait to be back!