Salsa night!

OOH! Before I forget. One more thing. Me and two other girls decided to go salsa dancing on Tuesday at this brazilian club. This guy in our Portuguese ward invited us. SOOOOO funny. I keep on discovering these little sub-cultures in London. Like, there are yoga masters who shop at whole foods and walk their dogs, there are grungy backpackers, there are asian tourists, nigerians, and apparently a whole community of Portuguese-speaking, fast-dancing, Brazilians. Did I understand anything they were saying? No. Did I know how to do the brazilian salsa? Of course not. Did I go anyways and dance with a million dirty older men? YES.

Luckily, the guy from our ward spoke english and basically OWNED that place. He got our friend in for free. She had forgotten her ID and they were going to send her home, then he pulled the guy aside and "took care of it". He showed us some sweet moves then went out there and he and this Brazilian girl tore the dance floor up. They were sooooo good. Watching how fast they moved and how intense it was makes me want to sign up for a salsa class when I get home. it's such a cool/beautiful dance!
Also, Paulo wouldn't stop buying us sprites. It was sweet but I was starting to get a stomach ache... :-)
A funny, unexpected night. Probably won't be going back anytime soon but it was still an adventure.


Here's a picture of the girls I went with! W're three out of the five blonde girls in our whole group. DEFINITELY a minority in that club and we were probably the only ones who had no idea what we were doing. hahah thank goodness for patient Brazilians.
Note: ignore Camille's cross eyes. She is crazy. Out to ruin all of my pictures....just kidding she's really gorgeous :-)

Walking in a Dream...

Ok, so since I still have a whole day of Scotland to report (which I feel like procrastinating) I think I'm gonna do a little post on what I've been doing recently!
(mostly pictures)


As much time as I've spent walking through Hyde Park I never found the Peter Pan statue. It's a huge park! So, yesterday I decided to hunt it down.

While I was taking pictures of the statue these two little old men came up and started talking to me. One of them claimed to be the model used for Peter Pan. After a moment I realized that would mean he was 104 years old. Old british men think they're soooo funny.

All the kids here wear cute little uniforms and I LOVE it! Makes me want to put my kids in private school just so they get cute little hats with ribbons. That's why people do it right?

We also went to a place called Kew Gardens which kind of reminded me of the LA Arboretum except bigger and with more green houses. It was really pretty!





I thought this building was so rad. I kind of wish I knew more about plants! How cool would it be to have a green house someday, like a fully legit greenhouse where you can do your gardening? I might just have to learn...


There was this cool tree top area too, where you could walk around. I kind of forgot I was in London...
And then this happened.



THE RAINS CAME DOWN! This is the first time we've experienced a real London down-pour. It was actually ironic because me and my friend Kristen were just talking about how we wanted to see some rain. Of course, the day we have Kew Gardens scheduled is the day it happens. Tremendous. Gotta love the English weather :-)

Today I went to The Orangery with some of the girls! It's this cute little tea room/restaurant next to Kensington palace.
I got chamomile tea, a scone with jam and clotted cream, and a chocolate gâteaux. mmmm yummy. but kind of expensive :-) Oh well! Had to do it once.






Basically, life is good. Also! Today marks the one month mark meaning I have exactly two weeks left here. Some times I get worried that I'm starting to take things for granted. I'm getting too comfortable here. Like today I was walking through the park to the Orangery and I was completely unfazed. I mean, it was nice to be outside but once upon a time I would skip through hyde park with wide eyes and take in everything I possibly could. I want to get back to that point because before you know it I'll be home and this whole thing will probably feel like a dream.

SCOTLAND: Part 2

OK, so maybe I've been putting this off. It's just been so busy and I was so wiped out from Scotland! But I definitely need to at least record everything we did before I start forgetting things. So here it goes...scotland part 2

After Edinburgh our group split in half. 6 of us went on to northern Scotland and the rest of them flew up to Dublin. I was one of the Scotland people. We hopped on a train that went through country and seaside up to Inverness where we got on ANOTHER train and continued up to Thurso. All in all it was about a 7 or 8 hour train ride. Beautiful, but a little long considering how short we were on time.



So we got into Thurso at 10 pm and the streets were EMPTY. There was this really funny moment where we all kind of looked at each other and said, where the heck are we?! It was such a random little town, it almost seemed like our friend had blindfolded herself and thrown a dart at the map and that's where we ended up. We went to thurso specifically just to catch the ferry to Orkney but still. Totally random. NOT a tourist spot. Lucky for us it was still completely light outside so we didn't have to find our hostel in the dark. Our hostel was pretty funny. We new it was called "Sandra's Hostel" so we were looking for that and not finding it. There was a little Italian cafe called Sandra's so we thought what the heck! and went in. Lucky guess. After we ordered some greasy disgusting food for dinner we went up to our rooms above the restaurant and went to sleep. Such an adventure!

We woke up early the next day to catch our ferry to Orkney. Let me just tell you, this was probably our biggest walking day. It was a two mile walk to the docks, another mile or two just walking through town, then about a 7 mile hike. So a little more than 10 miles? Not usually a big deal except for the fact I was wearing a flimsy pair of convers knock-offs that I was in the process of breaking in. My feet were KILLING ME. Oh my goodness. I could feel every single rock. Good grief. Never again.
But sooooo WORTH IT. haha
Another funny little tidbit. Our ferry ride was about an hour long on this super nice mini-cruise ship. We were so excited when we realized how nice it was. But then we got out on the sea and let me tell you, I have never seen such huge waves in my entire life. At least 30 feet, I kid you not. It was really incredible. Lying down and looking out the window in one second you would see the ocean taking up the entire window, then a little glimpse of land, and a huge sky. So cool. If I didn't have such seasickness problems I would have been happy to stare out the window for the entire hour. I felt like I was in "The Perfect Storm" except in sunny Scotland. I was able to lie down fast enough that I didn't vomit but my poor friend kiersten threw up THREE TIMES on that boat ride. Oh dear.



After we got off the boat we checked into our hostel, got some delicious food (an actual meal!), then caught a bus up to Skara Brae. I had never even heard of this place before and it was INCREDIBLE. It's this large neolithic stone village that was uncovered during a storm in 1850. 5000 years old! Older than the great pyramids, or stone henge, or the Parthenon. They call it the Scottish Pompei because of how well everything was preserved. Stone furniture still standing.




After we explored the museum and the ruins we had an interesting choice to make. We knew the bus would be leaving skara brae in a couple hours so we could either hang around and wait for it, or try hiking down the coast to this place called Yesnaby where hopefully we could find a road and wave down the bus that was supposed to pass at quarter past six. Consider: there was only one bus running and if we miss it...? Probably sleeping in the cow fields. It was a gamble. But we only had one day in Orkney! And we needed to make use of our valuable time. So we went for it!









The Broch of Borwick! An old watchtower we stumbled upon. I love that these old ruins aren't gated off or anything. You can climb all over them!



One of the most beautiful hikes I've ever been on. I've never seen coasts like this before! The rocks are stacked on each other in such an interesting way. They're kind of sinister looking. You really feel the ocean as an entity here. It felt almost alive like it was raging against the land and slowly wearing it down. We were the only people on that whole coast. I've never felt so small and isolated. It was as if we were set apart from the rest of the world and taken out of time itself. I could feel the ocean breathing on us and the wind was so strong it almost held you in the air. I know this sounds poetic and cheesy but I love the ocean. We understand each other :-)

So, to make a long story...well...a little less long, we caught our bus! It was 15 minutes late so we had a good amount of time to contemplate worst-case scenarios. We had just decided that hitch-hiking with one of the sweet elderly couples wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, assuming they were heading towards stromness...the only town on the island. But finally we spotted the bus in the distance and were able to wave it down! We all became a little hysterical at one point when it looked like the bus wasnt going to stop. Afterall, we weren't at a bus stop. We were basically in the middle of no where. But we chased it down until the driver finally stopped and got on to find everyone was laughing at us. We must have looked pretty wind-blown, wet, and ridiculous, so I don't blame them. I doubt I'll forget this day :-)

I still need to write about our time in Loch Ness but I'll do that another time.
Too doo loo!

A quick shout out to my one true love...

FOOD. Delicious wonderful food. Is there anything like a good meal? Or two...or three? Honestly, after a long day at school or work or play there is nothing that compares to an excellent meal. So this one's for you food. You've done so much for me and now I want to show you my appreciation. This is what I ate today:

For lunch--A spinach, garlic-cheese, and ham Crepe from The Creperie on Hampstead road



Note my "can you believe this thing" face. It was absolutely delicious. I will definitely be going back.

Afternoon Desert-- we went to Harrod's which is a beautiful huge department store full of things I can't afford. (We like to refer to it as "the fashion museum" just look don't touch). Anyways, Harrod's has a huge food/desert section. For the small price of 15 pounds you can get this little masterpiece.


The mother of all hot fudge sundays. Hazelnut, chocolate, and vanilla gelato with homemade whip-cream and a chocolate cup full of hot fudge and wafers. Pure bliss. Don't worry, I split it with two other girls...for price reasons only. FOR SURE I could have finished this thing off all by myelf :-)


Then for dinner I had chicken tikka masala with warm garlic naan bread. One of my favorite things about London is the prevalence of indian food. They have takeaway or frozen curries at almost every grocery store and it's really affordable! And also surprisingly delicious.

I know I still need to finish blogging about Scotland (I will. I promise I will. My head just hurts when I think about all the things I have to say), but I just couldn't resist. It was such an exceptional food day.

SCOTLAND: planes, trains, and automobiles...

OKAY! Where to begin? This will probably be a long post so bear with me. FIrst of all I guess I'll just say I'm back, safe and sound. London is feeling more like home than EVER which is strange but wonderful.
This past week was travel week for our group. There were students who went to paris, rome, spain, and ireland. I went to scotland! Because it seemed close enough that we wouldn't waste all our money/time traveling and I'd never been there before but always wanted to. In my family, we were raised with a healthy love of Gene Kelly so, having seen Brigadoon I knew exactly what to expect from this trip. heh heh...kind of. It was green everywhere, it rained on and off the whole time, even when it was sunny there would be rain, which meant TONS of rainbows, there was a lot of wind, the whole country kind of smelled like haggis (look it up), and it was basically an entire country occupied by old people. I kid you not. Outside the capital of Edinburgh, there was no one under the age of 50. Actually we only interacted with one guy who was our age and he was french and there for an internship. haha go figure! It was actually kind of great though. We would be riding in a bus and an elderly couple that looked like the farmers from "Babe" would be standing on the side of the road waving at us as we drove past. So cute! I want to retire to scotland and own a sheep farm some day. This is a picture of an authentic Scottish man we saw wandering around in Drumnadrochit.

I had an AMAZING trip. I'm not sure I've ever walked so much in a single week in my entire life! Piece of advise if you ever think about traveling to Scotland. Bring good shoes! Not a pair of rain-boots or flats, but good solid running shoes. You won't regret it. (Mom! I checked the mail before I left but the package hadn't come yet so I had to make do. Hopefully it's not lost in the mail)
Ok, in order to organize myself a little better I think I'll break this up into a few main points starting with Edinburgh...

This is the capital of Scotland! We flew in on Tuesday after class. It has a really old interesting history of war, castles, the plague, and being one of the main places to influence JK Rowling's portrayal of Hogwarts/Hogsmead. Priorities right? Anyways this city has been around since the bronze-age. Sooooo old. One of the interesting things we did there was visit the "city of the dead". There were a ton of different haunted tours that explored this underground system of vaults and tunnels. Apparently, back in the time of the black plague, about 80% of the population was wiped out in these narrow streets so they're supposed to be haunted! I managed to convince our group that 7 pounds was a small price to pay for a haunted tour underneath the city :-) Edinburgh was kind of built layer upon layer so there are weird passageways and staircases everywhere and doors that lead down to what you think is the gutter but instead it's just a city underneath the city! So cool. One of the main things I would love to have my family do with me because they would have really appreciated it. We're all sort of morbid and weird but I thought it was awesome.



Also, this is Edinburgh castle, built on a big hill, kind of looked like a fortress/hogwarts. It was awesome but expensive to get in (side note: I keep on visiting places I went to a couple years ago when I was traveling with my parents and remembering that they were free. FALSE. The only reason I thought they were free is because I was traveling with my parents and living a very charmed life.) I love visiting these historic sights but then I just end up feeling dumb because of how little I know! I want to go home and study study study just because history is so interesting and I feel so ignorant. That's another thing I love about traveling with my dad. Papa Kelley definitely knows his history and I miss his little comments and educational lessons. We'll go back some day dad! You would love Edinburgh.



Last thing from edinburgh (keep in mind we did all these things in less than 24 hours... talk about cramming it in!) We went to bed after the ghost tour at like midnight then woke up at 3:30 am to go on a sunrise hike. In Scotland the sun sets after 10 pm then rises around 4 so we didn't have a lot of time! But I'll sleep when I'm dead and this hike was so worth it. This is Arthur's Chair...






SO THAT WAS EDINBURGH! And only the first day of my trip. After this we got on a train for 8 hours and went up to Northern Scotland: Thurso, the Orkney Islands, Inverness, and Loch Ness. So much to say! But it's also time for desert here meaning it's time for me to go. I'll blog about everything else later!