The End of Part 1 of the Adventure

I finished school yesterday, so now I finally have some time to update. It's crazy how fast this semester has gone by. I fly home in 2 days! 

Day #76 - Friday, December 3: I had class today from 2-5. After going to class, I went to meet up with my friend Katie, who I worked with in the admissions office this summer and who is studying in Vienna this semester. She wanted to come visit London, and I let her stay at my flat. It took me ages to find her...she said she was at a Pret next to a Starbucks near the Victoria Underground Station. Well there are about 5 of those combinations near the tube station, and she didn't have a working phone. After finally finding her, we met up with Paige for fish & chips. Then we headed home and made gingerbread houses and watched Elf to get in the Christmas spirit!

my gingerbread house!

Day #77 - Saturday, December 4: Today Katie, Paige, Sam and I spend the day in the Notting Hill area. We grabbed lunch at a cute little cafe and then headed to Portobello Road, which is a famous market street in London, and on Saturdays, home to world's largest antique market. We spent a good 4 hours wandering up and down the street, and I don't even think we covered half of it! After the market, Katie and I went to a Christmas Festival in Hyde Park called Winter Wonderland. There were a couple of rows of booths selling various items, and I found a couple of neat Christmas gifts. After spending an hour or so there, I headed to the London Philharmonic Orchestra Concert. It was amazing! It really made me miss being in band and playing my Clarinet. 

Day #78 - Sunday, December 5: I slept in today and spent the afternoon working on homework, skyping, and watching Grey's. I went out to dinner with Katie and Paige for Katie's birthday, then came back and spend the night working on more homework and house hunting online for senior year!

Day #79 - Monday, December 6: I had class today from 11-2, then came home and took a nap. I spent the majority of the evening working on redoing a couple of pieces of work and editing some of my pictures. I also finally got a portfolio site up and running www.kelseylampman.carbonmade.com. The only part that's complete is my photography section, but check it out if you're interested! I also got to iChat with mom & dad and also Eric. 

Day #80 - Tuesday, December 7: Today I got up around 10, and left at noon for the Camden Markets with Paige and Sam. We ate lunch outside and almost froze (yes, I realize that since I'm cold when it's 34 degrees outside I'm going to DIE when I come home for break...it's supposed to be a high of 1 on Monday when I get home, I don't think my body is going to know what to do!) We spent the afternoon shopping and then met up with a friend for dinner. 

Day #81 - Wednesday, December 8: I had class today from 2-6. I came home, napped, and spent the evening working on homework! Nothing too exciting today.

Day #82 - Thursday, December 9: I had a meeting today with the study abroad director. Then I did some window shopping...and in the process broke my phone, whoops. I came home and did some homework, then had dinner with Paige. We thought it would be a great idea to make dinner with all of the food we have left that will go bad over break. Well it turns out that was freezer burnt chicken, tortilla shells, and pasta sauce. After attempting to make something tastey, and attempting to eat it, we both looked at each other and said "McDonald's". So that was dinner. I was up extremely late tonight doing homework, but finally finished everything!

Day #83 - Friday, December 10: I had my final class of the term today! I got done with class around 6, came home, made some dinner, and having not gotten any sleep the night before, went to bed at 930!

Day #84 - Saturday, December 11: I woke up rather late today, and spent the afternoon packing (yes mom and dad, I packed before the night before!!) and cleaning my room. I am all packed up to come home! Who knows how much my suitcase weighs, so I could be in for another adventure on Monday, but oh well. 

I can't believe the first semester is over! I am very excited to go home, but also excited to come back. I don't think one semester would be enough time here, I feel like there is so much more for me to do. I am excited to do more traveling next year and also learn more about myself and the city and the world. I've got quite of the list of things to do next year and I'm excited to get to them! This is going to be my last post till after break, but thanks to anyone who's been reading :) I hope you've learned some things and enjoyed reading about my adventures! I'll be back in January!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

Day #70 - Saturday, November 27: Today I went to Bruges, Belgium! I woke up at 5:30 to be ready to leave at 6:30. I traveled to London with a tour group I found, and we took a small little 16 passenger van. We drove from London to the Chunnel, drove the van onto a train, then took the Chunnel to France, and drove off. It was weird to still be in the same car even though there was an ocean between where we just were. Then from France, we drove to Belgium. There was snow all over the country side on our way into town, it was gorgeous!

Bruges (or Brugge, as they call it in Dutch), is a small city in Belgium (about 115,000 people), and is famous in Europe for it's Christmas markets, which we went to. I later found out too that Bruges is a UNESCO World Heritage Site! The town was perfect! It was very small, had cobblestone streets throughout, was decorated for Christmas, and had Christmas music playing everywhere. It really put me in the Christmas mood. There were also horse drawn carriages constantly running throughout the city, which was fun to see and hear.  We got to Bruges around 12:30, grabbed a bradworst (bratwurst!) for lunch, which was delicious, and shopped around the little Christmas market all afternoon. I found all of the signs with Dutch on them very amusing, it is a very intriguing sounding language.  We left Bruges around 5:30pm and drove back to London. While coming back into the UK, the French border patrol reminded me of Canada (Mom, Dad, Kathi and Dave will appreciate that I'm sure).

The entrance to the Chunnel in the UK

Cute little street Bruges

Funny street sign #1: telling people to pick up their dog poop

Funny street sign #2: Absolutely no clue what this says! Something about going to kindergarden maybe?

I loved their architecture! 

Brugge Markt...Markt is Dutch for market

Scooter at dinner in Brugge with my Coca-Cola light and Dutch placemat!

Day #71 - Sunday, November 28: I slept in today, as I was was trying to recover from cold number two of the season. I did some homework, some serious power cleaning of my room and the kitchen, made Chili for dinner, skyped for a bit, and did homework for the rest of the night! Lazy Sunday accompanied with tea!

Day #73 - Monday, November 29: I had class today from 10-1, came home and took a ridiculously long nap. I spent the afternoon working on a group project (by myself nonetheless, awesome group). For this project we had to do a 3 minute sound composition of a location, and for my location I chose to do Brugge. While I was there on Saturday, I had my iPad recording all day long. It was kind of fun to go back through and re-listen to my day. It's funny what you don't hear when you are actually there. My project is a fun little keepsake from my trip. I got to iChat with mom & dad tonight, and I enjoyed it as always. Only one more iChat till I'm home mom & dad :)

Day #73 - Tuesday, November 30: Seeing as today was Tuesday, I had to honor the laziness of Tuesdays by once again sleeping in. IT SNOWED TODAY!!!!!! I went to the grocery store and it was rather humorous to see people reacting to snow. Lots of people had umbrellas, which I thought was very funny. The flakes were huge and gorgeous under the street lights, it really made me miss home! Also, after grocery shopping, I got a nice little postcard from mom and dad in the mail which I rather enjoyed. It said "IOWA...where you can hear corn grow!"

Day #74 - Wednesday, December 1: How on Earth is it already December?! I had a meeting with my course leader today at 2 to discuss how things have been going with class. He was telling me about some of the projects for next term and I'm really excited! After class I attempted to go get Starbucks, but the didn't have a card reader for my card, so I wandered around in search of Christmas socks (I'm feeling very holiday-ie and I want Christmas socks!!). After that I came home, ate, skyped for a bit, and spend the night working on my sound project about Belgium. Still fighting a cold, I headed to bed early.

Day #75 - Thursday, December 2: MORE SNOW TODAY! It was funny how slow the buses were driving today, there was like 1/4 of an inch of snow on the ground. Silly British. I had class from 10-3, and then worked on a group project from 3-5. I ran into Paige at the bus stop, and as we were talking on the bus, a lady sat down behind us and asked where we were from in America (she had hear our "accents") Paige told her Boston and I said Iowa. She took out her hand to shake mine and said "Nice to meet you, I'm from Centerville, Iowa" What a small world! We got to talking, and it turns out she went to school at Luther, got married and moved to London. How bizarre! I cam home, cleaned for a bit, and am now updating my blog!

I can't believe I come home in 11 days! I am ready to take a break from the city for a bit, and come back refreshed next year. I'll have a couple more updates before I head home, so look out for them :)