Oh, I have left you all wanting.

Oh, I have left you all wanting.

I am finally at the point where I can focus my energy enough to sit down and complete a blog, even though I am by no means caught up with life. Will we ever be?

I have been promising my mother an itinerary of my planned trips to date but I have yet to give it to her so I am going to grace you all with the excitement and list my future trips here.

Feb 21-24
I have just managed a trip to Germany. I'll leave details of that to lie for a while, but I will say that I got to see Steve and Jamie and it was, to a degree... my saving grace.

March 5-9
1:00 A.M.- leave the bus station on Gloucester St. Oxford, approx. hour and a half bus ride to Luton Airport
3:00 A.M.- take a nap in the airport
4:30 A.M.- check in at the RyanAir desk to Marrakesh, Morocco, and go do departure gate
5:00 A.M.- take another nap
6:00 A.M.- board flight
9:35 A.M.- Arrive in Marrakesh, where we will be met with a man holding a sign that says "ZACH SMITH x 5" no really I'm joking I don't know what the sign will say, but we will then pile into two Mercedes and be driven to the town of Essouria on the Coast of Morocco

5-7th- Essouria

8th- get up and bus to Marrakesh, stay at the Equity Point Hostel/Riad thingy
9th-fly back to London, bus to Oxford

15:00h- fall fatigued, but full of joy, at the steps of 10 Canterbury Road, Oxford England, UK OX2 6LU
15:01h- take a short nap
15:30h- push in the code on our door and fall up the stairs to my bed. (avoiding all postponed homework)


Please, I realize that schedule was all you could ever hope for and more but the following dates will not be as cleverly and thoroughly displayed.

March 13-15
Dublin, Ireland

13th:
Bus to Stansted Airport, London

flight departs at 17:10
Arrives in dublin 18:25

3 days of unplanned activity

fly back at 21:55
arrive back sometime.


we have an unplanned long break March 19-23
Denmark? possibly?
(I'm open to suggestions)

March 27-29
was going to go hiking in Scotland, thanks to Zach and his obsession with Manchester United and poor planning skills it will have to be pushed to a later date.
Unplanned trip (also open to suggestions)

OOh this one is exciting...

April 5-9
Group trip to Paris.

All that really needs to be said about this trip is
James Taylor Concert
My birthday (which I rarely care about, but how can I be so indifferent having been graced with the luck of being in France for the day that I blessed the world)

Ok, so far thats it.
I intend to use the weekend to do some serious planning. Once again, I am open to suggestions. The world is at my fingertips.


heidelburg


also heidelberg


me and kennedy on a walk to the fruit market

We went as a group to London on the 1st and it was as much fun as I would anticipate considering the fun group involved. This was the first trip that all (40 whatever) of us went together. Really, it was a lot of fun and i didn't even have a hard time being in a big group which is unusual. (big things are happening here in England) First we all went to the British Museum, which was interesting, but everyone was ready to see the National Gallery. I really loved seeing the sculptures that were part of the British Museum. I have a new found appreciation of the hard work that is put into sculpting. Especially sculpting in the Greek idealist sense of the word. The National Gallery was like an art nerd's heaven and we spent quite a while in there. Luckily the small group that we had ended up breaking into all fell into a similar appreciation of art and so we were all quite blissful by the time we had made it through (most of) the Gallery. Because there was such a freedom in the schedule for the afternoon the big group did naturally split into smaller groups and so Casey and I ended up spending the rest of our night with Kara, Daley, Zach and Jeremy, which is not a new group, but it is a ridiculously entertaining one. We really spent most of the rest of the night traversing London with no real agenda or purpose, which made my knee flare up and tell me it hated me but the company was worth enough for me to tell my leg to shut up.



I'm not good at dancing because I don't like to be led, I let Jeremy lead me for one of the first time... ever (besides my dad)
he promised me a dance at Piccadilly Circus


me and Holland Wiggins outside of the British Museum


Me and Casey on the train


Casey in front of the pediment sculptures from the Parthenon


Sculpture in the British Museum


This is what I got when i tried to set my camera on a timer so we could all be in the pic... not bad. Upstairs at the British Museum


We ate in London's Chinatown for dinner. How could we pass up the offer by the man at the door to eat at "Chinatown's most hygienic restaurant" ?





Since I have neglected my blog for long enough to make this post incredibly outdated I will go ahead and add pictures from the weekend trip we just took. We started by driving to Warwick Castle where we spent a few hours before getting back on the bus and driving to the coastal town of Whitby. My ancestry is in Whitby so I felt right at home. I wasn't successful in finding the house that is pictured in the book of our lineage because it's a small town, but not that small. I did pick up some rocks off of the beaches of Whitby for my grandparents. (Sorry to spoil the surprise Massingills) We stayed at a hostel that was connected to the Whitby Abbey ruins. Saturday we got up and drove to York and then made our way home by dinner.

Aren't we sweet. We sat at the back of the bus so this was one of my 3 bus partners... the sweetest one of course


The four of us just look so good together. This is the view from a tower at Warwick Castle


Sweetness on the beaches at Whitby


more pictures to come

I'm always going to be one step behind. We do something and I take pictures and then by the time I get around to messing with it we've done something else and I have more pictures. SO yesterday we went to London but that will have to wait.

I'm in a class called Oxford Through the Ages. Which really just means we write a few papers and take a bunch of tours and walks around town that ACU pays for. (so sweet that ACU, letting me use 2GBPs (of my paid tuition) to pay for a tour of church buildings.) OH well I'm not complaining... too much... thats 2 GBP that doesn't leave my pocket.
Last week we took a trip to St. Michael's tower and walked around and saw what is left of the city wall. I think St. Michael's the oldest... or tallest building left in Oxford. shows how much I'm getting out of it... I'm too busy taking cool pictures.

Maybe being so high was a little too liberating...

there's KrisAnn (it was THAT pretty up there.)

just sharing some love with Kara (yellow) and Daley (red)

I know I shouldn't have... but I did.(and I'm happy about it.)

These silly girls.





Oh my goodness. I almost forgot...
One night Zach was really excited about the way he was about to shave his beard... next morning he came in looking like a Frenchman with a (nasty) mustache and... well I don't really know what it was. He says he didn't wear the sweater on purpose but I doubt it. Casey just so happened to look a bit like a French Fry herself so we decided we needed to set up a fake Gondola ride. There was a woven hat in the hall the day we got here so we donned him in it and this is what we ended up with (hilariousness.) .... an American Gothic turned french.