Monday, January 18, 2010
Keeping Family Close
This post is going to go off of the beaten path just a little bit from my normal routine of giving updates from my day to day activities... after going through all of the trouble and stress to find the right cell phone plan and figuring out just the right way to keep in communication with family from back home (while also watching my money!) I felt it important to write about just why that was so extremely important to me and why I was so gosh darn adamant about not giving up until I found a few to be able to stay in contact with my family... (wow long I know!) So many of my friends were probably thinking dang girl why can't you just give up already or just stick with the simplicity of the pay as you go phone and call it a day?! But you see it's not that simple for me. My family is my life. As crazy as we are, as much as we might drive each other nuts sometimes, get in fights, or anything else, I love them to my very core. They are my achilles tendon and I am nothing without them. I would never be able to be the woman I am today or in the position that I am in today if I didn't have their support to get me here. So because I'm constantly doing things for my career and throwing myself all over the country (and now all over the world) I've made a personal promise to myself that no matter where I go or what I'm doing I'll make sure that I can take my family with me (not in a literal sense of course). But I will do everything in my power to make sure that I have the absolute best access to them that I can make possible. I'll set up Skype (even if this means I have to personally visit their homes and set it up for them ;D), international cell phones, international SIM cards, I'll go to the ends of the Earth if that means they're only a phone call or text away. It sounds crazy, but they're my support system and having them in my pocket gives me not only the confidence I need to go all over the world but to maintain the family life that I can't live without. My crazy schedule will never be too busy for the people I love. I believe in that no matter what anyone will ever tell me. Yes, sometimes it's hard and sometimes I might not do very good. But I will never give up and it will always be worth it. My 8 is worth it. No matter where life takes me I will be able to have my career and my family. Don't even tell me you can prove me wrong or you want to try or you have plenty of examples. That's great if you do, but you're not me. I'm someone who sets goals, ones that are ridiculously high and then fights like hell to achieve them and when it's one that I believe in as much as something like this one it's impossible to keep me from seeing it through. I'll make it work and I'll do it the best way I know how... with my family standing by my side the whole way there.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Leaving the States to live in another country... not quite so easy.
I'm FINALLY writing my first post from London so I hope everyone is excited to hear all of the details! But that does mean this is going to be a VERY long post so beware! I will make sure to split it up into days so that way it's not so confusing and you can split your readings up :).
January 12, 2010
First of all I do want to thank everyone for all of their thoughts and prayers as I flew over to London. I talked to many people about my certain "fears" about flying, so the prayers were definitely appreciated. I even said one as the plane took off and now we all know everything turned out just great! I'm sure my family is just laughing at me now. On another funny note... take off was probably the first time I realized I wasn't going to be back in the states for a very long time... as I was looking out the window I couldn't stop staring at the Chicago skyline. I had never seen it looking more beautiful. It was dark and the lights were shining perfectly. The plane was just getting in the air so I was able to scan over the scenery. I never usually look out of the windows but this time I couldn't help it. All of a sudden I started thinking about this idea of how I was really leaving for good now and how I wasn't going to be back until May when I looked a little closer and there it was: a baseball field. Talk about tearing at your heart strings... I couldn't believe it, but I knew it was a sign and just a special piece of America to take with me to London :) But then I realized I would be missing Opening Day at Busch Stadium this year and things got a little depressing... haha. Well at least we all know I'll have something to look forward to when I get back. The rest of the trip went smoothly. I sat by a nice man from Slovakia named "Matthew" who talked to me just about the whole time except when I finally had to end conversation so I could get a few hours of sleep. He stuck by me the rest of the trip until his friend came to pick him up. At least it was nice to have someone to talk to, especially when we were stuck on the runway once we landed for about an hour at Heathrow... the being stuck part wasn't so fun but don't worry that was the least of my problems compared to everything that happened after that.
January 13, 2010
I arrived in Heathrow airport with two completely packed suitcases, a carry on, and purse. I decided to pass up the handy carts because I thought they cost money so of course I would try to save and be Miss Muscles! Boy was that a terrible idea! Later I find out I have no British pounds and don't want to convert my dollars to pounds at the airport because that's a rip off (good ol' me saving money again!), no internet to email my parents that I'm alive, and lots of luggage that is killing me to walk more than 50 feet. So life is great and I'm stuck to using my credit card at this point (not good)! So I stay by international arrivals hoping that because of my delay my friends might be arriving soon only to find out an hour later since I flew United and everyone else flew AA they wouldn't be going through the same terminal as I did. Wow! Yes friends it took me awhile to realize all of this and figure out that I had been in the wrong place the entire time. So first I went over to the pay phones and used my credit card to call my parents and tell them I was safe and alive in the airport. Then I went to find the American Airlines terminal so I could actually try and find my friends (keep in mind I was dying with all of my luggage). Luckily while I was trying to find an elevator to get me to the terminal I found those carts again! This time I figured it was finally worth it to buy one. So as I go to grab a cart and try to find where I'm supposed to put my credit card I see that they are FREE! Yes, FREE! I did all of that work for nothing! They were free the whole time. I couldn't believe it... it was actually quite hysterical and all I could think was "Wow, I can only imagine what else is in store for me over the next few days?" All I can say is I was honestly prepared. I knew that this was all going to take patience. I knew that nothing was going to go perfect and that there were going to be MANY bumps along the way and as long as I just waited it all out everything was slowly but surely fall into place (this has now proven to be true in both ways). Anyway after a very long walk in which at one point I considered even turning back because I thought it was leading to nowhere I finally found the AA terminal. But lucky for me... I did not find anyone. Oh and even better, I didn't end up finding anyone for about an hour. The airport time was a little frustrating. Slowly but surely people from my group started showing up. But, I got off the plane around 8am London time but didn't leave the airport to go to my flat until 2pm... so that was a very long stay in Heathrow airport and not exciting so those are all the details you're getting.
Once we got to our flat we didn't have much to get all of our luggage into our rooms before we were scheduled to go on a walking tour. At this point I was pretty tired but we were advised not to sleep until at least 8pm to avoid jet lag. So we had about 30 minutes to get our luggage in and then we went on a tour of neighborhood in Earl's Court, South Kensington. We have such a cute little neighborhood! It's a nicer part of London and it seems like a lot of families live around here so I feel pretty safe. While on the tour I was finally able to get to a bank where I could convert my dollars to pounds without getting charged a hefty commission. I finally had British pounds in my hands and I can't tell you how relieved I felt! I could finally start using cash to pay for things, which is how we normally pay for everything here so we aren't constantly being charged fees. After the tour we went to our first London pub. There I had my first experience with fish and chips and boy was it good! Finally we were all dying for sleep so we walked back to our flat. There my roommate and I put a few things away and finally went to bed around 9:30 or 10pm here. That, including the day I drove to O'Hare until I laid down to bed that night, all felt like one day to me, so when I talked about how thrown off my schedule was and my sense of time that's why.
January 14, 2010
Technically my second full day in London and things didn't get off to the greatest start. I'm rooming with five other girls in my flat and we have two showers per three people. Well my room's shower didn't work that morning so we ended up having to share one shower between six people and since we didn't know ahead of time it didn't make for the best morning. Although it didn't end up being too bad. I just took it in stride and didn't really get fully ready and made sure I made it to our orientation at CAPA right on time with the last end of my roommates. Then I spent the rest of the day at CAPA (the international program I'm studying through) having a few different kinds of orientations. Finally later that night we were done and everyone in our studying abroad group headed back to the flat. A bunch of us decided to stay in and cook a big meal. It was fun and quite delicious. After a quick trip to a local Sainsbury's (a grocery store that's more like a Walmart) I called it a night.
January 15/16, 2010
On Friday we had to go back to CAPA to talk with a local Police Sergeant who was supposed to be giving us advice on how to stay safe in London. Instead I got advice on which bar to go to to meet Prince William and Harry (luckily not to far from where I live), what not to call him when I saw him out at a local pub drinking, that I could no long go to Amsterdam as a foreigner and do drugs legally (don't worry doesn't apply to me), that if I did drugs I would get dropped from the program, more advice on some good clubs (bars)/local pubs, etc. Well you get the point on how that talk went! haha But really the Sergeant was actually hilarious and we all had a really great time. We did get some good advice as far as self defense and all of that went. I found out that if I did happen to injure someone who tried to attack me at night, if the law here in the UK didn't find it to be with good reason there was still a chance I could give in trouble! I guess I couldn't use some of the moves my brother in law taught me! That's too bad because he's an former Marine and those moves were good! :)
Later that night our entire Missouri School of Journalism group went out to dinner with the CAPA administration and a nice Pub/Restaurant. We had some different food and to go with that some very different table conversations all thanks to my lovely roommate Jess :) haha. You can see some of the facebook pictures I'm tagged in if you'd like to see more about that one. Anyway it was nice to get to spend more time with everyone and have another nice meal. After that we all decided to go out together to a club for our first real night going out. As you can see their name for bars here is a "club" and "pub" is more just a place for beer and they usually have wine too and some food but the service is much different than a restaurant. Anyway the club we went to was called "The Zoo Bar," how appropriate right? We had a great time there. We found out later it was a pretty "touristy" bar, so we'll probably try to go back to more local bars, plus it was a little pricey. But at least the music was fun to dance to and Allison had a break out performance of Single Ladies :).
On Saturday we went a bus tour of the entire city of London. It was great! I loved it so much because for the first time it truly opened my eyes to the city. I was able to see how big London really was and realized how useful the tube could really be or at least that I really needed to use it so that I could get to all these different parts of the cities and experience them more. The city is just HUGE! There are so many beautiful and unique places I feel that are almost hidden (not really hidden it's just that they're so spread out). The tour really got me excited to start all of my city of London adventures. I can't wait to really scour the city and not only visit all of the big places but all of the small and interesting places as well. We were able to stop at Buckingham Palace (sadly the Queen was gone :( so no I didn't get to meet her, St. Paul's Cathedral, and The London Bridge. They were all awesome, and I was able to get great pictures and check them off of my to do list! Another quick note: I was also excited because I found two really cool Catholic churches and they were both insanely gorgeous! One is in my neighborhood (although it might be done in latin :S) so it will give me the more congregational/personal touch and I was also told that Tony Blair (the former British Prime Minister) and his family attend that church! The other one is the Westminster Cathedral (not to be confused with Westminster Abbey). This is GORGEOUS! Oh myyyyyyy and I thought I had never seen anything more beautiful since my Uncle Frank's celebration mass, well this one will definitely give it some competition. It's actually by Westminster Abbey too. The bus driver told me it's not as much of a "neighborhood" church, so that one might be more of a tourist attraction but I will at least have to go a few times for the experience. Anyway I'll let you know what I think once I go! So excited!
January 17, 2010
Sunday was a bit of an adventure and quite tiresome. Sadly church didn't work out. It sounds funny but it's extremely easy to get lost in this city and when it happens you get lost for a long time and then your plans are kaput. Well when I realized I had no clue where I was going once I decided between my two churches that's about what happened. But have no fear, I am making sure that never happens again and next Sunday I'll be able to take on the city by myself. Seriously it's more frustrating for me to not be able to do these things on my own, but I know it's going to be getting better soon and I'm trying to realize that I am in a new country and trying to give myself a bit of a break. Ah!
Anyway, a few of my friends and I decided instead to go to the London Zoo later that afternoon! So we took the tube and a long walk later and once through the park we got there only to find out you can't enter an hour before it closes and it was exactly an hour before it closed... great! So, instead we decided to walk on over to Primrose Hill. It's a huge hill in London and when you walk to the very top you can get an incredible view of the entire top of the city of London. It's also the place of the twilight bark in the movie 101 Dalmatians when they were trying to find the dogs! Well let me tell you, you could see EVERYTHING from there and the view was breathtaking! I'm so glad we still got something out of that visit, especially out of all of that walking!
Once we got back to our flat Allison and I were starving so we decided to grab some dinner just down from our flat. We went with something new... Indian food! I had to write about this because I have never had Indian food before this. And........... it was good! haha It was very spicy, but very good. The menu was difficult so we picked something from a picture! haha I also got this yogurt smoothy drink. It was basically yogurt in a cup just not as thick, but it was actually very good. It was an interesting experience, but fun nonetheless. Anyway, I'm trying new things and going on these mini adventures everyday... doing things I would never typically do and I'm quite content about that right now. As long as I keep taking these baby steps who knows what I'll be doing by April! Indian food? What's next!?
January 12, 2010
First of all I do want to thank everyone for all of their thoughts and prayers as I flew over to London. I talked to many people about my certain "fears" about flying, so the prayers were definitely appreciated. I even said one as the plane took off and now we all know everything turned out just great! I'm sure my family is just laughing at me now. On another funny note... take off was probably the first time I realized I wasn't going to be back in the states for a very long time... as I was looking out the window I couldn't stop staring at the Chicago skyline. I had never seen it looking more beautiful. It was dark and the lights were shining perfectly. The plane was just getting in the air so I was able to scan over the scenery. I never usually look out of the windows but this time I couldn't help it. All of a sudden I started thinking about this idea of how I was really leaving for good now and how I wasn't going to be back until May when I looked a little closer and there it was: a baseball field. Talk about tearing at your heart strings... I couldn't believe it, but I knew it was a sign and just a special piece of America to take with me to London :) But then I realized I would be missing Opening Day at Busch Stadium this year and things got a little depressing... haha. Well at least we all know I'll have something to look forward to when I get back. The rest of the trip went smoothly. I sat by a nice man from Slovakia named "Matthew" who talked to me just about the whole time except when I finally had to end conversation so I could get a few hours of sleep. He stuck by me the rest of the trip until his friend came to pick him up. At least it was nice to have someone to talk to, especially when we were stuck on the runway once we landed for about an hour at Heathrow... the being stuck part wasn't so fun but don't worry that was the least of my problems compared to everything that happened after that.
January 13, 2010
I arrived in Heathrow airport with two completely packed suitcases, a carry on, and purse. I decided to pass up the handy carts because I thought they cost money so of course I would try to save and be Miss Muscles! Boy was that a terrible idea! Later I find out I have no British pounds and don't want to convert my dollars to pounds at the airport because that's a rip off (good ol' me saving money again!), no internet to email my parents that I'm alive, and lots of luggage that is killing me to walk more than 50 feet. So life is great and I'm stuck to using my credit card at this point (not good)! So I stay by international arrivals hoping that because of my delay my friends might be arriving soon only to find out an hour later since I flew United and everyone else flew AA they wouldn't be going through the same terminal as I did. Wow! Yes friends it took me awhile to realize all of this and figure out that I had been in the wrong place the entire time. So first I went over to the pay phones and used my credit card to call my parents and tell them I was safe and alive in the airport. Then I went to find the American Airlines terminal so I could actually try and find my friends (keep in mind I was dying with all of my luggage). Luckily while I was trying to find an elevator to get me to the terminal I found those carts again! This time I figured it was finally worth it to buy one. So as I go to grab a cart and try to find where I'm supposed to put my credit card I see that they are FREE! Yes, FREE! I did all of that work for nothing! They were free the whole time. I couldn't believe it... it was actually quite hysterical and all I could think was "Wow, I can only imagine what else is in store for me over the next few days?" All I can say is I was honestly prepared. I knew that this was all going to take patience. I knew that nothing was going to go perfect and that there were going to be MANY bumps along the way and as long as I just waited it all out everything was slowly but surely fall into place (this has now proven to be true in both ways). Anyway after a very long walk in which at one point I considered even turning back because I thought it was leading to nowhere I finally found the AA terminal. But lucky for me... I did not find anyone. Oh and even better, I didn't end up finding anyone for about an hour. The airport time was a little frustrating. Slowly but surely people from my group started showing up. But, I got off the plane around 8am London time but didn't leave the airport to go to my flat until 2pm... so that was a very long stay in Heathrow airport and not exciting so those are all the details you're getting.
Once we got to our flat we didn't have much to get all of our luggage into our rooms before we were scheduled to go on a walking tour. At this point I was pretty tired but we were advised not to sleep until at least 8pm to avoid jet lag. So we had about 30 minutes to get our luggage in and then we went on a tour of neighborhood in Earl's Court, South Kensington. We have such a cute little neighborhood! It's a nicer part of London and it seems like a lot of families live around here so I feel pretty safe. While on the tour I was finally able to get to a bank where I could convert my dollars to pounds without getting charged a hefty commission. I finally had British pounds in my hands and I can't tell you how relieved I felt! I could finally start using cash to pay for things, which is how we normally pay for everything here so we aren't constantly being charged fees. After the tour we went to our first London pub. There I had my first experience with fish and chips and boy was it good! Finally we were all dying for sleep so we walked back to our flat. There my roommate and I put a few things away and finally went to bed around 9:30 or 10pm here. That, including the day I drove to O'Hare until I laid down to bed that night, all felt like one day to me, so when I talked about how thrown off my schedule was and my sense of time that's why.
January 14, 2010
Technically my second full day in London and things didn't get off to the greatest start. I'm rooming with five other girls in my flat and we have two showers per three people. Well my room's shower didn't work that morning so we ended up having to share one shower between six people and since we didn't know ahead of time it didn't make for the best morning. Although it didn't end up being too bad. I just took it in stride and didn't really get fully ready and made sure I made it to our orientation at CAPA right on time with the last end of my roommates. Then I spent the rest of the day at CAPA (the international program I'm studying through) having a few different kinds of orientations. Finally later that night we were done and everyone in our studying abroad group headed back to the flat. A bunch of us decided to stay in and cook a big meal. It was fun and quite delicious. After a quick trip to a local Sainsbury's (a grocery store that's more like a Walmart) I called it a night.
January 15/16, 2010
On Friday we had to go back to CAPA to talk with a local Police Sergeant who was supposed to be giving us advice on how to stay safe in London. Instead I got advice on which bar to go to to meet Prince William and Harry (luckily not to far from where I live), what not to call him when I saw him out at a local pub drinking, that I could no long go to Amsterdam as a foreigner and do drugs legally (don't worry doesn't apply to me), that if I did drugs I would get dropped from the program, more advice on some good clubs (bars)/local pubs, etc. Well you get the point on how that talk went! haha But really the Sergeant was actually hilarious and we all had a really great time. We did get some good advice as far as self defense and all of that went. I found out that if I did happen to injure someone who tried to attack me at night, if the law here in the UK didn't find it to be with good reason there was still a chance I could give in trouble! I guess I couldn't use some of the moves my brother in law taught me! That's too bad because he's an former Marine and those moves were good! :)
Later that night our entire Missouri School of Journalism group went out to dinner with the CAPA administration and a nice Pub/Restaurant. We had some different food and to go with that some very different table conversations all thanks to my lovely roommate Jess :) haha. You can see some of the facebook pictures I'm tagged in if you'd like to see more about that one. Anyway it was nice to get to spend more time with everyone and have another nice meal. After that we all decided to go out together to a club for our first real night going out. As you can see their name for bars here is a "club" and "pub" is more just a place for beer and they usually have wine too and some food but the service is much different than a restaurant. Anyway the club we went to was called "The Zoo Bar," how appropriate right? We had a great time there. We found out later it was a pretty "touristy" bar, so we'll probably try to go back to more local bars, plus it was a little pricey. But at least the music was fun to dance to and Allison had a break out performance of Single Ladies :).
On Saturday we went a bus tour of the entire city of London. It was great! I loved it so much because for the first time it truly opened my eyes to the city. I was able to see how big London really was and realized how useful the tube could really be or at least that I really needed to use it so that I could get to all these different parts of the cities and experience them more. The city is just HUGE! There are so many beautiful and unique places I feel that are almost hidden (not really hidden it's just that they're so spread out). The tour really got me excited to start all of my city of London adventures. I can't wait to really scour the city and not only visit all of the big places but all of the small and interesting places as well. We were able to stop at Buckingham Palace (sadly the Queen was gone :( so no I didn't get to meet her, St. Paul's Cathedral, and The London Bridge. They were all awesome, and I was able to get great pictures and check them off of my to do list! Another quick note: I was also excited because I found two really cool Catholic churches and they were both insanely gorgeous! One is in my neighborhood (although it might be done in latin :S) so it will give me the more congregational/personal touch and I was also told that Tony Blair (the former British Prime Minister) and his family attend that church! The other one is the Westminster Cathedral (not to be confused with Westminster Abbey). This is GORGEOUS! Oh myyyyyyy and I thought I had never seen anything more beautiful since my Uncle Frank's celebration mass, well this one will definitely give it some competition. It's actually by Westminster Abbey too. The bus driver told me it's not as much of a "neighborhood" church, so that one might be more of a tourist attraction but I will at least have to go a few times for the experience. Anyway I'll let you know what I think once I go! So excited!
January 17, 2010
Sunday was a bit of an adventure and quite tiresome. Sadly church didn't work out. It sounds funny but it's extremely easy to get lost in this city and when it happens you get lost for a long time and then your plans are kaput. Well when I realized I had no clue where I was going once I decided between my two churches that's about what happened. But have no fear, I am making sure that never happens again and next Sunday I'll be able to take on the city by myself. Seriously it's more frustrating for me to not be able to do these things on my own, but I know it's going to be getting better soon and I'm trying to realize that I am in a new country and trying to give myself a bit of a break. Ah!
Anyway, a few of my friends and I decided instead to go to the London Zoo later that afternoon! So we took the tube and a long walk later and once through the park we got there only to find out you can't enter an hour before it closes and it was exactly an hour before it closed... great! So, instead we decided to walk on over to Primrose Hill. It's a huge hill in London and when you walk to the very top you can get an incredible view of the entire top of the city of London. It's also the place of the twilight bark in the movie 101 Dalmatians when they were trying to find the dogs! Well let me tell you, you could see EVERYTHING from there and the view was breathtaking! I'm so glad we still got something out of that visit, especially out of all of that walking!
Once we got back to our flat Allison and I were starving so we decided to grab some dinner just down from our flat. We went with something new... Indian food! I had to write about this because I have never had Indian food before this. And........... it was good! haha It was very spicy, but very good. The menu was difficult so we picked something from a picture! haha I also got this yogurt smoothy drink. It was basically yogurt in a cup just not as thick, but it was actually very good. It was an interesting experience, but fun nonetheless. Anyway, I'm trying new things and going on these mini adventures everyday... doing things I would never typically do and I'm quite content about that right now. As long as I keep taking these baby steps who knows what I'll be doing by April! Indian food? What's next!?
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