January 2-5

       Well, here I go. My last post! Sorry about the delay, but you will understand why I haven't posted anything for awhile after you read this post. It's gonna be really llooooooonnnnnnnngggggggg, and everything is kinda blurry at this point, but I'll do my best.
       On Sunday, Ash and I decided to take the alternative scenic route to Oakwood. We took Cockfosters road up to Cockfosters station (I still can't get over that name!) and enjoyed the beautiful sights. There is a little pond along the way, and it had a few mandarin ducks in it. I had never seen those before, but they are beautiful and so colorful!  (Facebook pic to follow). The fields on either side of the street were so green and expansive. We both agreed that the leisurely walk was very refreshing after all the rushing we had been doing lately. As we walked along, we ended up at a cafe called Miracles where we grabbed some delcious food and a couple lattes. I had a prawn and avodaco sandwich which sounded strange but was very tasty. After we stuffed ourselves, we took the tube to the Zoo. I already posted about my previous trip there, so I'll skip the redundant description and just say that we had a lovely time. It wasn't nearly as cold as it was when I went there last, thankfully!
       The large amount of moving and sightseeing we had done during the past few days was starting to catch up with us, so we decided to go back to halls early and make some dinner. I think we had spaghetti. In the evening we decided to go to Christ Church (my last service there), and strangely we managed to end up at the tube station EARLY. How often does that happen in London? As we looked at the clock that said 6:30 and realized that we had half an hour to kill before the service started, we decided to sit at the tube station until 6:45 in order to avoid the awkward early arrival to the church service. We laughed at ourselves for preferring to wait at the cold tube station instead of in the warm church, but we didn't want to be those awkward people who show up to church half an hour early and don't really know anyone. Weird, I know, but hey, that's how it went down.
       The church service was alright, but my favorite part was the spiced-up version of "Be Thou My Vision" that they sang at the end. I talked with the worship leader afterwards about it, and he gave me a copy of the music for me to take back to my homeland : ). I chatted with Gill for a little while too, and we said our final goodbyes but not before exchanging contact details. What a blessing she and Martin were! Sarah, Kim, Ash, and I walked back to campus and discussed the message which I had many reservations about. In short, I didn't trust the speaker's reasoning and inferences. Anyway, our conversation passed the time, and I think the only other thing I did that night was work on some homework.
       On Monday, Ash and I hit the city for some final sightseeing and shopping. First stop - Big Ben and Westminster. We decided that we were willing to pay the entrace fee to Westminster, and we took a guided tour through the place. Wow - talk about ornate! It was absolutely beautiful, but I left thinking, "These English people cling too tightly to the past." It's a tendency for all of us I guess, but the English (at least those in London) are pros at it. I found the amount of memorials and graves to be a bit overwhelming, but I enjoyed myself nonetheless. After our tour, we were famished (we both get hungry pretty often, especially with all the walking we had been doing) and found a cute Italian restaurant for lunch. The people running the place were moving at Stabucks rush hour speed, if not faster. It was unbelievable. In fact, I had a hard time relaxing to eat my food because they were whizzing back and forth so quickly. The good news is that they brought our food out very quickly, and it was delicious! Hmmmm, carbs :) After we stuffed ourselves AGAIN, we walked up Whitehall Road and into the Trafalger Square, Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus area. We walked into St. Martin in the Fields (a cathedral off of Trafalgar Square), and I took a picture of the HUGE organ. When we walked down to the crypt, we found a bustling restaurant instead of eerie graves. It was strange, but I'm proud of the English for modernizing like that :) After walking around a bit, Ash and I landed at Fortnum and Mason where I did some serious shopping! I managed to fit all my purchases into my backpack when we left, and we walked up Regent's Street to check out the exceptional Anthrolopologie store they have there. We roamed around in there for a bit, and then decided to head back to campus. We were getting pooped quicker and quicker, and I was wearing heels which didn't help. My feet had been getting progressively more sore ( is it more sore or sorer???) as the week wore on. That night, Ash, Kim, and I went out for some fish and chips. They served us a WHOLE cod fish along with the chips. We're talking beyond American portion size. That plate was huge! But it was delicious, and I had the second half of it for lunch the next day. I'm pretty sure I crashed when I got back to my room. What a fun-filled day! Oh, I forgot to mention the idea-mashing session Kim and I had for our Shakespeare papers on Twelfth Night. Poor Kim was so stressed about it. After we reached saturation point, we made some ice cream hot chocolate to help her drown her sorrows and to help me grow my food baby (he's growing so quickly! Erggg). It was delicious. You should try making some sometime. Ben and Jerry's is good with Cadbury chocolate.
       Tuesday, the library FINALLY opened back up, so I spent 3 hours there in the morning and spent the rest of the day doing homework. Ash entertained herself in her room and had a movie marathon day. She was ready to relax a bit, so I didn't feel too bad about hulling up in my homework cave. I made some surprising progress on my assignments. A little later as I sat at my desk mulling over my work, I heard a knock on the door and figured it was Ash or Kim or Sarah. Not today! Alayna had come back to halls early, and I freaked out! She might as well have resurrected from the dead because I never thought I would see her again (at least for a very long time), but there she was! We had a nice chat and she showed me her new ENGAGEMENT ring! Wow, everyone is getting hitched or planning on it these days. Her man proposed to her under the London fireworks at midnight on New Years - classy. It was soooo nice to see her again!
       That night, Sarah, Kim, Ash, and I went up to the local Indian food restaurant for my last supper. Wow - it was sooooo tasty! I am officially a fan of Indian food, even though I haven't eaten much of a variety of stuff yet. We stuffed ourselves (AGAIN - what, is this the 3rd time in this post? No wonder I gained weight.), and headed back to campus. It was about 9:00, and I still hadn't finished my assignments that I planned on turning in before I left. Because they weren't technically due for awhile, I decided to leave them to finish at home so I could enjoy my last night in London and have time to pack and make a massive batch of goodbye cookies. So, the homework stopped there, but I have to tell you a funny story about one of my assignments before I move on. My professor wanted a certain part of my music project to be bound in one of those really small, comb-like spiral  folder things. Of course I didn't have one, I didn't know where to find one, and I didn't have the time to look for one. Because I was still planning on turning in this project before I left, I decided to improvise. I found the front and back cover of a spiral-bound notebook that I had and used those, but I didn't have a way to bind them. I needed string but all I had was thread or floss. Then I saw a drawstring backpack/bag thing I had laying on the floor, and took out the drawstring. Perfect - that would work. Wait, I don't have a hole punch. I promptly folded the side of the paper that was going in the notebook, and I cut tiny triangles out of the side where the hole-punches should have gone. It felt like I was making a paper snowflake, but it worked! I stiched up my makeshift notebook with all of its improvised components, and I never felt so POOR! I was laughing at myself the whole time. It was fun actually.
       Ok enough of homework. On with the cookies and packing. I had SOOOOO much stuff that wouldn't fit in my suitcases, so my neighbors made BANK off of me and scored some sweet stuff, such as all my food. Packing took way longer than I thought, and I had to finish the next morning. Ash helped me make a double batch of cookies late that night. I made the dough, and she chopped the Cadbury chocolate bars. I was writing my goodbye cards at the same time, so Ash ended up putting most of the cookies on their sheets and into the oven. Her mom is a massive baker, so I should have known she would be the perfect person to help me bake! Of couse we had a couple cookies for ourselves and then packaged them up to give away the next day. I didn't fall asleep until about 2:00am.
       I was up at 8:00 on Wednesday morning and got right to packing. I made the rounds to Sarah, Kim, and Alayna's rooms to give away my extra stuff and later to say goodbye. After everything was said and done, Ash and I left campus over an hour later than we had planned. I had SOOOO much luggage, I don't know how it managed to carry it all let alone fit all the essentials in it. (I had a guitar too, remember). My big duffle was so heavy the the roller handle broke off by the time I had made it to the tube station! Haha, I still managed to pull it along, because it was crazy heavy. We had an 1.5 hour tube ride ahead of us, and we were getting nervous about making our flights. Ash's flight left 20 minutes before mine, so that was especially worrisome. We parted ways at the check-in desks at Heathrow and scurried our way to our gates. Thankfully, we both made it. Ash's phone didn't work in London, so I didn't know that she had made it until she landed in Chicago during a layover and texted me. Thank God! I can't imagine her (or me for that matter) being stuck in Heathrow waiting for another flight. She was headed to San Francisco next because it was cheaper than flying into Sac.
       I flew with Air New Zealand all the way to L.A. on a 10.5 hour flight. The time went by really fast actually, and I watched 3 movies: Eat, Pray Love (which was kinda overrated, if you ask me, but entertaining enough), Made in Dagenham (an English flick), and Charlie St. Cloud (it's true - Zac Efron is hot.). The flight was the most plush flight I have ever been on. I had tons of leg room, the overhead compartments were huge, there were 70 movies options not to mention TV and music channels, and they served BOMB food and free wine with your meal. Seriously?!?!? Yes, seriously. And there was cheesecake for dessert. Yum.
       Eventually I made it to L.A. and had to go through customs and re-check my bags for my United flight to Sacramento (see below for details on how that worked out). After I made it through an offensive amount of security and border control hoopla, I had to walk from terminal 2 to terminal 7 (quite a long way) to connect to my next flight. There was probably a free shuttle somewhere, but I didn't want to bother with it and I had time to spare. Plus, I needed some exercise after sitting on my butt for 10.5 hours and growing a large food baby in London! I made it to my gate with about 2 hours to spare, so I napped a bit, looked through pictures, and chilled. Come 10:00 (we were supposed to depart at 10:30), they tell us that the flight has been delayed until 11:20 because the flight crew was still on a plane from Boise. Hurray. I phoned my family to tell them to hold off on arriving at the Sac airport until about 1 instead of 12 (midnight). We finally made it out of L.A., and I snoozed most of the flight. When we were descending into Sacramento (we were close enough to see the city lights through the clouds/fog), we heard an announcement saying, "Sorry folks, (our airline stewardess was from the South), but because of the heavy fog, we have to divert to San Francisco where we will get some fuel and come up with another plan." Lovely. So, we landed in San Francisco, fueled up, and waited for the plan. Ends up, that United totally cancelled the flight because the fog was way too thick in Sac for a safe landing. SOOO, everyone piled off the plane into the San Fran airport at 1:30 am where we ran into a customer service clerk who told us that there wasn't a shuttle bus yet to get us to Sacramento and she was working on the hotel arrangments, but it wasn't looking good.
       Here's where it gets cool. So, as I mentioned before, Ashley was flying into San Fran. Her parents were gonna pick her up because it was cheaper that way. When Ash was in Chicago and texted me to tell me she had made it, she also told me that her flight to San Fran had been delayed until 11:00. (Of course all of this would happen to us. It's like the Middlesex shuttle bus service was planning it or something). I remember this when I got stuck in San Fran, so I found a departures/arrivals board and saw that her flight was due at 2:30. Originally, she was supposed to get in at 10:45, but of course that didn't work out. I thought, "I wonder if I can get a ride home with her?" I called Ash and left a message and a text because she was still on the plane. Then I remembered that I actually had her mom's number in my phone. This was very odd because her mom and I aren't BFFs or anything (she's awesome, but we don't text each other or anything like that). The only reason I had her number in my phone was because Ashley's phone wasn't working in London and she had asked me earlier that week to text her mom to let her know that she had arrived safely. Ash told me her number, and I sent the text. Well . . . the number was still in my phone, I called her mom and definately was able to catch a ride back to Sac with them! I waited for Ash's plane to arrive, her parents arrived soon after, and we loaded up our stuff for the very VERY foggy drive back to Sac. When we got back, my sister picked me up from their house and I was FINALLY home at 5:00 am.
       Wow. I know that God had more than taken care of me while I was in London, but I had no idea that He has this last little adventure in mind! I thought all that adventure stuff was over! Talk about provision! What a cool story. God definately "wow"-ed me with that one.
       So, needless to say, my parents had gone home when they heard I was getting a ride, so they were sleeping when I got in at 5:00 am. I had a snack, chatted with Shelby, and went to sleep around 6:30 am.
   
       And here I am. It's Friday morning (I woke up at 6. Jetlag, you know), and I have finally made it back home. What a trip. It still feels surreal to be home, but I'm definately glad to be here.
 
       So, what's next? I kind of get to recreate my life now.

       Goal number 1 - get rid of this food baby I grew in London and just get fit in general. I won't be able to hide under London layers for much longer! 24 Hour, here I come!

       Goal number 2 - ???

So, that's the end of Lauren on London and Life Abroad. Thanks for reading.

December 30- January 1

       Wow, I have a lot of catching up to do! Ash and I have been kickin' our London Bucket list really hard these past 3 days. On Thursday, we started off at St. Paul's Cathedral. It was super beautiful, but we only got to see some of the inside because you had to pay to see the rest of it. I've had my camera on me the past few days, but I've pretty much delegated the task of photo-taking over to Ashley because she enjoys it way more than me and gets better shots too. We weren't supposed to take pics inside the Cathedral, but we snagged a few - oops. We walked from St. Paul's over the Millenium Bridge right into the Tate Modern. I've nearly given up on museums, but I still feel the need to at least check them out briefly. The first exhibit we saw was in a huge hall. It was 100 billion porcelain sunflower seeds covering the floor about 1.5 inches deep over about the area of a basketball court. It was dumb. In fact, I snuck up next to Ashley and whispered that very thing, "This is dumb," and she agreed. We couldn't even walk on the seeds because the dust from the porcelain is apparently a health hazard. Wow, what a waste of porcelain. Anyway, we kept laughing and moved on to another floor where we found more modern stuff, of course. One of the exhibits was about 6 painted canvases about 10x10 feet that looked like the remains of a peeled SKU tag off of various plastic products. Very strange . . . and scratchy looking. I remember being confused mostly for the whole time we were at the museum, but we kept moving. I really don't get moden art. Because Ash and I like to crack jokes all the time, we responded to our confusion by making fun of some of the pieces. The icing on the cake was this room full of canvases that had big pastel stripes on them. Just rectanglur strips. Ash said, "That looks like a faded-out American Eagle t-shirt," and she was exactly right. It was after that comment and a supressed laugh, that I said, "I think it's time for us to leave." Ash said, "Ya, I'm pretty sure I'm not respecting all this, and I'll just keep laughing if we look at more of it." As we walked out, I felt as if I should have been kicked out for disrespecting the "art." I really don't get it, everything we saw. I can't really describe it much more than that, but I was really happy to leave.
       Right next door to the Tate Modern is Shakespeare's Globe Theater. If you've read my other blog posts, you already know by now how I feel about Shakespeare. I just took a picture of the place from the outside and moved on. Ash and I made our way down the bank of the Thames, along the Queen's Walk, and toward Tower Bridge. We came across a museum about London prisons (but didn't go it), a cool clipper ship that was famous for some cool reason that I can't remember right now, and then (here's the best one) a pub called The Horniman Pub. I'm not kidding. I have a picture of it. We both were getting hungry at this point, but I just couldn't get past the name, so we moved on and continued laughing. Dude, what is it with these English people and their sexual humour? First, we have Middlesex University, then Cockfosters (the city our school is in), then The Horniman Pub??? The worst part is, you get used to it after awhile. Wow - I'm not sure this stuff would fly in the U.S. Oh, also they often call cigarettes "fags," which I have heard before but I'm pretty sure is not P.C. back home. Enough of that. Moving on.
       Our feet were already sore, but we kept walking, crossed Tower Bridge, and landed in front of the Tower of London. We decided to indulge and pay for the tickets to get inside. It is much bigger in there than it appears, and there were tons of people! Of course we wanted to see the Crown Jewels, but we didn't feel like spending the rest of our lives standing in the infinity long line that wrapped around a huge portion of the large courtyard. Crazy. Way worse than Disneyland, but probably not quite as bad as those people who had to stand outside St. Pancras Station a few weeks ago waiting for Eurostar. We decided to join a free Beefeater tour instead and spent the next 45 minutes or so listening to our good-looking Beefeater tell us stories about the Tower, the royal dynasties, and various incidents of torture. The whole experience was pretty cool. We left and landed at a pub a few blocks away called the Hung, Drawn, and Quartered Pub - very appropriate considering its vicinity to so many historic killings/hangings. The title wasn't as bad as the Horniman, and we were tired and hungry, so we stopped, had a pint and a snack, and played some cards. I had an ale called Honey Bee, and it was really good. We then headed to Covent Garden just to kill some time and then went back to campus for the night.
       Yesterday was great. Ash and I landed in Camden Town at 11 and shopped our little hearts out until about 4:30. I think I've written about Camden before, but in case I haven't, it's basically a huge collection of markets and stalls that sell all kinds of stuff with lots of personality. It's one of my favorite places in London. When we were done scoping everything out and scoring some cool stuff, we headed to the city center (Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square areas) to meet up with Sarah and Kim. We were early, so we walked around a bit. Of course there were tons of people because it was New Year's Even, but Ash and I managed to find a cute and cozy cafe to chill at for awhile. It was very peaceful - and warm. I've pretty much mastered the art of layering since I've been here, but you can't keep out ALL the cold. We eventually met up with Kim and Sarah, walked past Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster, and along the Thames until we found a spot that looked like a good fireworks viewing area. It was only 8:00 at the time, so we wandered around and found a pub to chill at for a few hours. Kim taught us how to play hearts with the trusty deck of cards Ash always has with her, and we passed the time very enjoyably. By 11:00, we had found a place on a crowded bridge not too far from The London Eye, and we just waited until midnight for the fireworks. The London Eye had a mild light show going to pacify us until the big show at midnight, and it was really awesome. Thankfully, it was clear and not raining that night! The fireworks were amazing, and the crowd was surprisingly mellow. Of course there were a few crazies, but most of the people were very responsible and considerate of the large crowd. After the fireworks, we made a long walk to one of the relatively close tube stations, waded through a sea of people while clinging to each other and our backpacks, and finally made it onto a train. It was about 1:30 by the time we got to Oakwood Station, so we called a cab back to campus where I promptly crashed right into bed and slept until 11 this morning.
       After a lazy morning of recovering from last night's celebration, Ash and I caught the 12:45 bus to Oakwood and spent a good chunk of the afternoon at Portobello Market. I have been planning this week to be a major shopping week for me for awhile now, but I still don't like spending so much money in such a short time! I've scored some awesome stuff, but I'm ready to settle down back home, start making money again instead of living off of my savings, and to start spending less. Ash and I left Portobello at about 4:30, and headed for the British Museum. It was closing just as we got there, but we both were ready to head back anyway. Back at halls, we had ourselves some dinner, popped in Dumb and Dumber and just laughed and relaxed for awhile. We parted ways at about 9, and I got to work on some laundry and homework while Ash did her own thing. It's almost 12:30 am now, and I am ready for some sleep!

Prayer Request of the Day: That I found find the time to finish my assignments as quickly and as well as possible, oh, and with as little stress as possible :)