Warsaw, Poland

I get Fall Break (like Spring Break in the fall), so I went on a school trip to Poland. Awesomeness dipped in cool sauce. I can now say that I have been to 3 countries (Mexico, England and Poland), I'm working my way around the world. We first stayed in Warsaw, I took close to 300 pictures during the week so I weeded through them and will only post the important ones.

We stayed in hostels. This is my (very orange) room that I shared with 2 girls from school. The name of the hostel was Okie Dokie.
My bed.
This is Polish money know as zloty. I was high rollin' in this country. Things are much cheaper in Poland.
We had a shared bathroom with pictures of naked kids painted on the walls.

Palace on the Water in Royal Baths Park

This is a bridge in the same park. The colors of Poland in fall are Uh-mazing!

Me, on a bench

A closer view of the Palace

This is a stage in the park where productions are still held

This is my boss/friend/Amiga/comrade/partner in crime, Heather. She is demonstrating her mad opera skills

Random peacocks roam the park

We were on a city tour and our guide pointed out that the scars in the walls are from Nazis shooting and killing people

This is old town, so pretty

Me in old town

This guy was in the middle of the square, he had a bird in a cage and was selling stuff.

This was a real person hanging out on the street. People would put money in that tin and he would ring a bell. My theory is, people were paying death to give them one more day to live. I walked on the other side of the street cause he freakin' scared me.

I don't know what building this was on, but I thought it was cool

I had McDonald's for breakfast one morning. Not long after I started eating this meal, a Polish woman walked in and started rambling in polish to me and pointing at my tray. I thought she wanted food, so I offered her some and she kept shaking her head. I had told her I only spoke English. Finally she reached under the wrapper and took my receipt and held it up. I told her it was her. I was so confused, I couldn't figure out what she was going to do with my receipt. Heather told me you have to buy something to use the bathrooms in a public place, so we are guessing that is what she was after. Side note: I thought it would be weird to eat french fries for breakfast. It wasn't, at all.

This picture was painted on the side of a building

I was at an exhibit in the Palace of Culture and Science

This is a view of Warsaw from the top of the Palace

At Hard Rock Cafe

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Their flowers are fall colors

Fryderyk Chopin (pronounced: show-pan) is from Poland and somewhat of a celebrity. The bench I am sitting on has a button that you press and it will play one of Chopin's songs. This is one of many benches. You can do a whole musical bench tour around the city!

Susan "glad to be back in a country where English is mostly spoken" B.

Easter in October

Whew! I made it through mid-terms and I only cried once. Now I can commence my England adventures. First though, I am going to Poland on my Fall Break. I will be there for 7 days and when I get back I will have a load of good stuff to post. In celebration of finishing mid terms, I treated myself to a mani/pedi.
Here is a little Susan 101: I love Cadbury Creme Eggs. They are my absolute favorite candy on earth. At the begininning of the year, just after Valentines Day I start to look for them in the grocery stores. I buy a few each time I go to the store and stock up while they are on sale. This year, I ate Cadbury Eggs right through the month of May. It's probably a good thing they only sell them once a year. Except this year, I was shopping for travel shampoo and while I was standing in line to pay, something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. Cadbury SCREME Eggs. OMG. I was so stoked! I filled my basket with 10 of them! Normally when something this amazing happens I rush and tell every friend I come in contact with. Not in this situation though. The thing is, I'm not sharing. If others found out I had these sacred eggs and asked for one, I would be inclined to tell them no. Selfish, I know. What really sucks is I found them at the end of October. Had I know they were in stores, I would started stocking up at the begining of the month.

Susan 'thank you, Easter Bunny' B.

Mid Terms

My adventures have been put on hold. This week is mid term exams. I have spent all of my free time reading, studying and writing. That argumentative essay is the making me sick to my stomach. I turn it in tomorrow and it will take everything I have, not to throw that paper at my professor. There is a pub directly across from campus. It's nice, quiet, and they put mini marshmallows in their hot chocolate. We took advantage of studying there this week.

A little Neolithic Revolution while I sip my hot chocolate

Taking advantage of the table space. That bag of chips, YUM!

Working hard

Mmmmmm

Susan 'It's not all tea and crumpets in England' B.

Cheers!

It's this handsome devils birthday!!! Under the Happy Birthday definition in the Susan B. dictionary, no birthday is actually happy without cake/cupcakes. So of course there was a celebration going on across the pond!



My Dad makes me strong. He has always believed in me and always been my biggest fan. He supports me in my decisions and is the first to comfort me when I'm upset. He has never let me gone without. I love you Dad. Happy Birthday!

Cupcake cheers from Alice, Shahida and I

I love how Shahida and I look so mesmerized by this cupcake.

Susan "Daddy's little girl" B.

Forget Me Not

Here's what's happening. I have been given an assignment, a research paper, a argumentative research paper. I am debating the question: Should mothers be discouraged from entering their daughters into beauty pageants? First of all, I love watching Toddlers and Tiaras. It's like a train wreck. I can't stop watching it. It's my guilty pleasure. This paper is going to drive me to drinking. It is the bane of my existence. I have written and re-written it 3 times and tomorrow I am going for a fourth. My first draft, my professor told me I sounded like a journalist (thank you) and my 3rd round, I had Shahida read through it and she too said I write like a journalist. I am glad I picked the right major.I watched the Relief Society Woman's Conference a couple of weeks ago and Elder Uchdorf gave that talk about Forget Me Not flowers. The next day, I was basking in the sun at the park and when I was walking to go back home I found Forget Me Not flowers! I was so excited!
Friday night I went to another boat party. It was freezing! But I met a few nice people and had a good time.

Saturday I went into to Central London to see a play called Decade. Brilliant! It was a big pill to swallow. It's about 9/11 and covers the last ten years since it happened. First, when you enter the venue, they send you through "security" like you're at an airport. You walk through a metal detector and they had 6 desk set up (3 on each side). "Cops" were sitting behind the desks and someone would tell you which desk to go to, to be questioned. While I was standing in line, I watch a lady being frisked. It was intense. The cool thing about the play was, the seating was set up to resemble Windows On The World. It was the restaurant at the top of one of the towers. There is a small octagon shaped stage in the middle of the room, and they have booths set up around the perimeter. The show really utilized the whole room. I have to admit, I choked up more than once during the production. They portrayed people that were in the towers and what happened after it got hit. Intense. There of course was a whole story line to follow, but this is getting kinda long. So I sat at a table with 3 other people. An older couple and then another older gentleman. At the intermission, we swapped 9/11 stories about where we were when it happened. The 3 of them were British and it didn't occur to me that the other side of the world was as affected as the U.S. I really hope they take that production to the U.S. Awesome. I had dinner with Alyssa before the play and we saw a good photo op. See below.
I got a few compliments on my hat. While I was on the train the man across from me said my hat was 'cute' and then gave me a thumbs up while repeating, 'very cute'. Then again at the play the woman I sat next too said the same thing. I was feeling a little self conscious about it when I first went out because I don't normally wear hats. By the end of the night though, I owned that hat. I wasn't wearing the hat, the hat was wearing me.

Susan 'I will never forget' B.

Strawberry Hill

Strawberry Hill is not just a cheap wine that high school kids consume in large amounts each weekend. It's an actual place, and I went there. Back in 1748, this dude, Horace Walpole, he was a politician, writer and collector created Strawberry Hill as his summer villa. It is both one of the earliest and finest examples of the Gothic revival and established the style now know as "Strawberry Hill Gothic". I pulled that last bit of information from the pamphlet they gave me.

When we walked up I commented that I thought it would be bigger. Well, it is. This is just 1/16 of Horace summer villa. Check out the sun!
This is the back of the above picture, but see to the left the darker building? Imagine that to go the length of 2 football fields.

We had to wear booties on the tour

I took this from the bottom level of the villa, known as The Hall. It's 3 stories from where I'm standing. This is a shot of the ceiling.

This mirror hangs in The Blue Bed Chamber.

The shape of this door, classic Gothic.

I am totally gonna have a chimney place like this someday.

The Gallery

Fifty-six foot long and seventeen high, and thirteen wide without the five recesses. The ceiling is taken from one of the side aisles of Henry VIIth chapel at Westminster Abbey.

The Great North Bed Chamber

You might be wondering why all my pictures have a chimney in them. Because that is all that is left in each room.

The Beauclerc Closet

The walls are hung with Indian blue damask.

...part of that...WORLD!

When the sun comes out, so does the crowd. After our Strawberry Hill tour, we ate dinner down by the river with the rest of Richmond. Funny story: It was high tide so the river was flowing over onto the sidewalk. This chick, who was on a bike, rode out toward the river not realizing how close she was to the edge and fell in! It was so funny! Most of the hill saw it and there was this unison gasp as we watched her slow descent into the water, a loud burst of laughter and then an applause as she climbed out. Side note: That water is disgusting. I wouldn't let my dog go in that water.

Susan "Up where they walk, up where they run, up where they stay all day in the sun" B.