A Foreign Holiday

Hard Rock Cafe served a mediocre Thanksgiving Dinner.

This was my first Thanksgiving away from family! Actually, it was my first holiday away from family. It was doubly horrible because here in England no one celebrates Thanksgiving, no one cares about it at all! It would be one thing to spend Christmas here; at least then everyone would be in a united holiday spirit. But in the days leading up to Thanksgiving there was no shared anticipation, no building of joy, nothing. On the morning of Thanksgiving I didn’t crawl from the bed to the couch and curl up, still in my cozy pajamas, to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Instead I woke up, dressed sensibly, and shivered my way into work where I spent the day actually working! I have never in my life worked on Thanksgiving! It felt so wrong. Please understand, I love my internship but as the hours ticked away I found my spirit sinking–how could I be working on such an important holiday?

The sad thing is, I never realized how much today meant to me until I was away from my family. I never realized how much I appreciated my cousins jokes, my aunts cooking, my dad and uncle’s teasing, and my mom’s calm presence. I never knew how important Thanksgiving was. It is the holiday that is truly about family. Christmas is just as much about gifts as spending time with each other, but Thanksgiving… Thanksgiving is all about being with those for whom you are grateful. I am grateful that I have people to miss at home and people who miss me.

My adoptive family for the holiday (Thanks again Nolans!).

I am also grateful for the Nolans. I spent Thanksgiving with my roommate, Ellie, and her family. I am so thankful that they let me into their family time and that I got to spend my first holiday away from home with people who are so welcoming and fun! I ate turkey, cranberry sauce, and cosmos! Despite having me work right until closing time I am also grateful for the people at my internship. My co-workers gave me Thanksgiving-day-gifts (how sweet) of chocolate and a fun little pin! I also had a chance to explain Thanksgiving to people who were genuinely interested, and ignorant, about the holiday (I did tell them normally no gifts were given). It was a fantastic British Thanksgiving! Oh, after dinner I got a chance to take some fun night photos. Yay!

Marble Arch

I love my neighborhood at night.

Colourful lights.

Read Full Post »

Where Oh Where?

First and foremost, I owe you all my deepest apologies! I fear that I have abandoned this blog in the past two weeks. It won’t happen again! I promise. Now, let me catch you up on life.

I fell down some stairs and bruised my elbow. This was about a month ago and it has just stopped hurting. Here’s me all goofy with my lovely sling.

I turned 21 on May 31st and have yet to show you photos! Here are just a few from my birthday picnic. It was such a fantastic celebration. All of my lovely friends brought food and we sat on blankets and ate delicious dishes and talked and laughed and twirled in circles and generally had a good time (which may or may not have been influenced by the sangria my lovely friend Ada brought).

21 candles on that cake!

My best friend Katie and her husband Brendon!

You know Katie&Brendon and to their right is my little sister, Nadine, and her boyf Luigi (his real name, I swear)!

The boys (Spencer, Korey, Matt, and Matt's roommate) have deep discussions. Haha.

The whole picnic event was organized by my darling boyfriend, Kenneth. He did all the work and I just got to show up and have a fantastic time. Isn’t he wonderful? I celebrated for three days, two cakes, and one (or four) giant daiquiris! I wish I could tell you about all the bars I’ve been to now that I’m 21 but honestly, I’m saving my pennies right now. I leave for London in less than two months. Yikes.

Passport photos!

So far I’ve received my new passport and am about halfway through the visa process. I hope to send in the paperwork for the visa tomorrow. It should take about a month to get my visa/passport back to me so the sooner the better! I bought my plane ticket a few weeks ago! I leave September 1 at 6:40 pm and arrive in London on the 2nd at 7:05 am. I am so excited and so nervous. Rest assured, there will be a post dedicated to study abroad in the future. Plus, I’ll be blogging from London all fall (stay tuned for cool giveaways).

The other day I did something I’d never done before! I walked across the bridge to Georgetown!

ph. Rainier Heredia.

My fellow ambassadors (Jefferey, Kay, and Rainier) and I, walked from the Rosslyn Metro station across the bridge, through Georgetown to the Foggy Bottom Metro station. It was so much fun to walk across and see the kayaks. I’ve lived in the area my whole life and I can’t believe I’d never done that. I highly recommend MU students to put that on their ‘to do’ list. Plus, once you’re over the bridge and in Georgetown there are a ton of awesome shops (American Apparel and Annie Creamcheese) and yummy places to nom.

I’m going to wrap up this post with some Fourth of July photos. Luckily, living on campus means there are fireworks (literally) in your backyard. The golf course right next to Marymount hosts a firework show ever Fourth. Kenneth and I had a little picnic and watched the fireworks right on the back porch of the Main House.

Cheese and cider. Yummy!

My fireworks date!

Kaboom!

How was your Fourth?

See you soon!

Read Full Post »

In Which You Catch Me In a Lie, But You Forgive Me (aka Springfest!)

Hey kids! I know in my last post I said I’d probably never write about campus activities again… well, I lied. But I think you’ll forgive me for this one because you get to hear about SPRINGFEST (and see pictures, of course). Today was the annual Springfest at Marymount and the theme was luau; which meant no burgers and hot dogs (at first I was disappointed). Instead we were fed a delicious, flavorful chicken that we ate out under the sun! Food is better when it’s eaten outside.

Oh yeah, you could throw pies at Res. Life. I hope they have this next year.

The weather today was perfect for an outdoor event. It was sunny, 84 degrees, and as the party went on it cooled until it was the perfect temperature. I spent the first hour or so with my friend Katie (she’s a commuter but a member of the fashion club so she had help set up and decided to hang out with me). Katie had submitted a design to the t-shirt contest where the winner had their design printed and received $100, which she should have won (there were sea turtles, dammit!); the t-shirt design that did win was pretty cute, even if there were no sea turtles. The first thing Katie and I did was pick up our free Springfest tee (our class received white t-shirts seniors had blue, I think underclassmen had green).

Inflatable things everywhere!

We wandered around so I could to take photos for you guys! There were so many inflatable things (what do you call them?) on the grounds! One was a pirate themed obstacle course where you raced a friend. There was a “surf” thing where you tried to stay on a moving surf board. That one was fun to watch because the faster the surf board spun, the farther the person riding it flew when they finally lost their balance. The one I really wanted to try was the rock climbing on a giant Easter Island head (google it). Unfortunately, I wore a dress—but Marymount has had a rock climbing wall of some sort every Springfest that I’ve been here so I’ll try next year (that means you get to try too)!

Have you ever climbed a giant head?

At the bottom of the hill there were water activities! There was a water slide that I was going to try but it cooled down way too fast! There was also a dunk tank. After Katie left, Kenneth and I and some friends headed down there and saw that it was abandoned. Our very brave friends Tim and Matt decided to be dunk tank dunkees for us to play with! I’m happy to say that we made the dunk tank popular again. Haha. By the time Kenneth and I had left a crowd of twenty or so had gathered to try and dunk people. Kenneth got the first legit dunk on Tim (he had previously been dunked by Samantha because she pushed the button you’re supposed to hit with the softball). Oh, sorry no photos–I’d already taken Frank (my camera) back to my room.

My friend Emily flying off the surfboard.

In addition to the chicken and sweet potato fries for dinner there were delicious treats. There was a smoothie company that handed out delicious smoothies with little umbrellas! I loved the strawberry so much that I went back for a second, only to find that they had packed up. Boo. There were also snow cones and a pop corn machine. Ada was running the cotton candy machine, which means I got the biggest bunch of cotton candy ever. It was devoured immediately and I swear-I will be hopped up on sugar all night. All in all, it was a delicious afternoon.

Spun sugar! Yum! Mine was blue though.

The only downside to my adventures today is that I didn’t go to math class. For some reason I kind of assumed that Friday evening class would be canceled for Springfest. Apparently, the University administration does not agree with this logic. I have no idea why I, as a junior, would not realize that classes were still on. Drat. Oh well. I had a really great time and it was the first time I’d actually spent more than thirty minutes at Springfest. I’ll defiantly wear shorts next year so I can actually do activities! You should, too :).

Read Full Post »

Hippie Love Letter to Spring

Today was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day*; everything that could go wrong, did. Exhibit A: I spent an hour and a half working with iMovie to create a movie for my creative writing class. When it came time to save and email, the computer/software/internet completely failed me. It took me an hour (and the help of a Mac proficient friend) to figure out a way to save the project online. Exhibit B: Due to this delay, I didn’t have time to finish my math homework, which was due last Tuesday. Exhibit C: My stress caused me to pick a fight with Kenneth, thus alienating the one person with the potential to calm me down. Exhibit D-G: Just more of the same. Take my word for this.

The perfect climbing tree--a fact I'd never noticed until today.

As the title suggests, this post is not about all the shit I had to schlep through today.** Instead, it’s about how I’m dealing with it. I am writing this post (using pen and paper) while lying on a picnic bench under a very tall tree. The second my math class ended I came here. I dropped my bag and my binder on the grass, took off my sweater, put on my oversized sunglasses, and lay down on my back. It has been 37 minutes and I haven’t moved but to roll over and begin writing.

Lying on the picnic bench

The sky above me is blue and there is not a cloud in sight, a pleasant change from the gray storm clouds that were here the past few weeks. It is over 70 degrees and there is just enough of a light breeze to keep me from overheating. There are birds chirping. I swear I’d forgotten what birds sound like. The sun is slowly setting behind Ireton, one of the beautiful, old, white buildings. To my right there is an adorable Asian boy, no older than eight, tossing a football back and forth with his father. If I had my iPod I would be listening to Bob Marley. “Sun is shining, the weather is sweet now.” Everything is going to be alright.

The sun setting behind Ireton.

This post is about the early arrival of spring, my favorite season. Despite Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction, spring has come to Arlington right on schedule. Just in time to save me from a stress-related, psychotic break. Thank God blue skies and warm weather are here to cure what ails us.***

Spring is here!

*I am, of course, referring to this book, written by Judith Viorst.

**Ok, it’s a little about the shit I schlepped through.

***I have now been here 57 minutes. It is almost six, time for dinner.

Read Full Post »