Uftda!! Sweden here I come!!

The day is almost here! I have just finished packing all my things for my trip to Sweden tomorrow… it seems like a dream still! This week has been INSANE, but it is totally worth it because, I don’t know if you have heard, BUT IM GOING TO SWEDEN!!!

Here is a quick look back at the past few days:

Friday- So, I had every intention to get up and do homework in the morning and hang out the rest of the day, but the homework thing never really happened. I ended up sleeping in till around noon (I couldn’t believe how tired I was!) and then shopping that afternoon. The best part of the day, however, was that night. We had a ladies night where the 11 of the girls who were around that night got all dressed up cute and went out for a nice dinner. This was so amazing!! It was so much fun to get dressed up and take pictures, and then enjoy a nice dinner with just the ladies. There were so many funny stories and memories that happened that night. I would talk about them, but then I would have to kill you because what happens at girls night, stays at girls night! Anyway, we took about 3 ½ hours eating dinner and laughing. Then we came back and watched my favorite movie in the universe, She’s the Man. What a fun and relaxing day/ night it was!! (Although I got NO homework done). I won’t tell you how much we spent at all together at dinner….. haha

Saturday: I went to Bath, England for a quick day trip with all of my friends! It was such a great trip!! We went to the Roman baths, the royal crescent, the fashion museum, and so much more!! Also, I have a friend that is studying abroad in bath this semester, so I got meet up with him for lunch. It’s been a while since I have seen him, and it was great to catch up over a meal!! The whole day was a chill trip where we just walked around and got lost in the streets of Bath. I would definitely go back there… it was a beautiful city. We also got lucky to have gone on a day where it was almost 50 degrees and very sunny! It was a wonderful day full of several funny moments and hilarious memories! I was so tired when we got back, but it was totally worth it.

Sunday: I actually did do homework today haha I also got to be skyped into children’s church back at home, which was the highlight of my life! It was so great to see the kiddos and my church family. I am so blessed to be a part of such an incredible community of believers! I then ate with the floor family (fried rice thanks to Steven...it was AMAZING) and went to church. It was just me and Megan who went this time, but it was a great service!! I have made some friends at St. Aldates now, and it is so cool to be able to know people when you show up at church! Then afterwards Megan and I went out for ice cream and shared a banana split! It was simply amazing.  I then came back and chatted with the friends for a while (as usual, in the kitchen haha)

Monday- Wednesday:  These days have been full of homework, tests, Greek, and paper writing (thanks to Core). Pretty uneventful and busy. But I did get to volunteer on Tuesday night, which was the highlight of my day. My German friend and I laughed a lot and shared a lot of stories. I now know more about Germans that I ever thought I would haha But now, I am getting ready to go to bed really early so that I can get up at 3:30 am tomorrow to go on my trip. I don’t know if you heard, but IM GOING TO SWEDEN!! (sorry, I’m so excited I cant contain myself…my poor friends)

The hard part of this week was having a friend return to the US because her mother was suddenly put on life-support and is not doing well. The thing about living in community is that when one of us hurts, we all hurt. We miss Kaitlyn, and we are constantly praying for her and her family throughout this time! Please keep her in your prayers. This is everyone’s worst nightmare, and it really put things into perspective.

But God is so faithful!! He has showed his extreme love and grace for me extensively this week. His love never fails.

The next time I will be blogging will be after I go to SWEDEN!! Please pray for safety for not only our group, but for all of my friends that are traveling… we will be all across Europe!! (IM GOING TO SWEDEN!!! Sorry, last time I promise)

“May the Lord bless you and protect you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” Number 6:24-26

I'm boring today.. haha

Well hello there!!

It’s been a while since I have blogged….I’m sorry! Life is crazy. Anyway, I don’t have too much to say! School is busy as ever and things are getting crazy up here in Oxford! However, I am proud to announce that I have just gotten back from watching my first Rugby game…. Holy cow! It is seriously my new favorite sport!! The people who play that sport are not boys, they are MEN! I had a great time laughing and learning the rules with all my friends tonight at the game. It sparked some NBA Basketball talk and that made me a little homesick for my Mavs… I miss them!! However, I am a new fan of rugby. It is fantastic, take my word for it!

It’s been an interesting week. I have become more and more thankful for the wonderful people that I am on this trip! Words cannot explain how much they all mean to me. God is so good, and he has blessed me with such an amazing family and friends, both here and back home! I’ve had some really life-giving conversations with people this week, and I am so thankful for them!

Also, I AM GOING TO SWEDEN!!!!! I can hardly believe that I actually get to go to Sweden in a week and a half!!! It’s definitely a dream come true for me, and it is going to be a highlight of my life!!

I have had so many She’s the Man and Seinfeld quotes this week…. It’s been legit!

Other than this, it has been a pretty uneventful past couple of weeks! Filled with much laughter, dance parties, talks in the kitchen and many memories made!! I don’t know if I have said this before, but I love Oxford!!

Until next time….  (hopefully I will be more interesting next post haha)

Paris, Paris, Paris!!

Wow! What an eventful and extremely fun weekend it has been!! I went to Paris this weekend, and had the most wonderful weekend of my life (well, next to working the NBA all star weekend of course haha)

First of all, Happy Valentines Day! I don’t view this day as a negative thing because I am single- its quite the opposite actually!! I feel so loved by my friends and family on this day, and I love it! (love, get it haha). But most importantly, it’s a good reminder of how much my Lord and Savior Jesus loves me! Sounds corny I know, but Jesus has been my date on valentines day for the last 20 years of my life and every single one of them have been incredible! This one has been fun so far… but more about that to come!

Back to Paris- lets start with Wednesday night/ Thursday:

Wednesday night started off well!! A group of 5 of us ate dinner with our teachers in their flat… and it was amazing!! The meal was awesome and the company and fellowship was even better!! (and they had cool-aid… I have never tasted something so good haha) After dinner, the adventure really began! Well, our group got cheaper tickets to take the train to London if we left at 10:30 pm rather than at 3 am, so we left the house earlier than originally planned. This, however, resulted in us sleeping like homeless people in the train station at st pancreas in the 20 degree weather until our train for Paris left at 7:20 the next morning. This was such a funny and interesting experience that I’m so glad I had, but never want to have ever again (seriously, EVER haha). I have never been so cold in my life. And I got no sleep, NO sleep. But its all ok, cause I was going to Paris!! Anyway, I also have a new appreciation for homeless people, and I am seriously so thankful for the fact that I have a warm place to sleep every night, because I could not imagine sleeping like that every night! Anyway, we got on the eurostar train to Paris at 7:15 am. Let me just say, I am so glad that we took the train!!! It was beautiful looking out the window (when I wasn’t sleeping) at the beautiful countryside, and I loved being on a train instead of a plane for once. We got to Paris around 11 ish, and it was a completely different world the moment I stepped off the train. I never realized how hard it is to communicate with people who don’t speak the same language as I do. And we almost got conned by teenage gypsies asking for money. But don’t worry, we pretended we only spoke German and couldn’t understand what they were asking us haha. We then got tickets on the underground and headed off to find our hostel!! Ok, now when we booked our hostel, we didn’t really look at the reviews or anything until later, and we discovered that it really was not the best hostel to be staying at. The friends hostel was not in the friendliest part of town haha. We had so many inside jokes about it going in, but I would be lying if I said that we were not a little anxious about staying there. It turned out to be fine (TONS and TONS of stories that happened) and we survived!! But anyway, after we checked out our hostel, we then attempted to meet up with the other two guys that were in our group. This turned out to be one big fail, for our directions were completely wrong, and they got us lost for a couple of hours! And we got a little lost on the metro system, but after a while we figured it out and we didn’t get lost the rest of the weekend!! Haha but seriously, by this point we hadn’t seen any of Paris but the bad part and we were all tired and hungry, so we were not the happiest people on the face of the planet. But we met up with the guys finally and headed out to eat! Things were starting to look up. We ate at this little café near St. Chapelle church, and I had a delicious omelet! Even for a person for me who does not like eggs all that much, this omelet was awesome!! After this, we walked around Paris a little bit and saw some of the city! Now this was the Paris I was expecting: wow! After taking lots of people and wobbling on the bridge (video to be on facebook soon), we went to the Museum Dorsay (spelling, sorry!). This was such a cool museum! The best part was probably taking a 30 min nap on this octopus looking couch up on the 5^th floor though haha! After this, we headed to the Eiffel tower. I can’t describe what it felt like to be standing under the Eiffel tower! After reading about it and seeing pictures for so long, it was surreal to be actually standing under it! The top was frosted over so we couldn’t go all the way up (I’m telling you, it was COLD!), but we did go up to the 2^nd floor. It was absolutely breathtaking to see all of Paris lit up at night. And to see all this with my friends made it even better!! It was cold up there, but the view was beautiful and something that I will never forget! After this, we headed back to our hostel to dethaw our frozen limbs and go to sleep! We were all so tired that we practically passed out as soon as we got back. One more word about staying in a hotel: you get to know your friends even better than you thought you would when you are all in a small room and sharing 1 bathroom….. good times!!  We definitely had 8 people brushing their teeth at one time… it was a thing of beauty!

Friday:

Ok, so we forgot the time difference and overslept a tad, so we were off to a bit of a late start, but it was all good! Friday morning we headed to Versailles. The train ride there was a blast and so many memories were made! When we arrived at Versailles, our first priority was to eat! Me and a couple of friends found this tea room that was owned by two sweet French ladies. This meal ended up being the biggest blessing in my life. I’m not going to lie, I was a little worried all weekend about being able to find things that I could eat that didn’t have gluten in them, but God completely took care of me, for I was full and happy the whole weekend! At this restaurant, the ladies made everything from scratch, and they assured me that there was no gluten in ANY of the dishes (insert hallelujah chorus here!). So I had salad and a traditional French dish: duck and mashed potatoes. One word: amazing. This was the best meal I have eaten yet! And to top it off, the chocolate cake they made had no flour or anything in it either- so I got to have cake!!!!! YAYAYAYAYA! After my very exciting and satisfying meal, we headed to the palace of Versailles. Now, this had to be one of the highlights of the weekend! It was absolutely beautiful. After studying it for so long in school, it was so nice to actually be there!! And to top it off, I saw a fire truck when I was leaving, so I was very happy! From here we headed to the Louvre, and because we were students, we got in FOR FREE!! It was great. Finally got to see The Mona Lisa! It is so big that I didn’t get to see even a fourth of it, but I enjoyed every bit that I did get to see! After this, me and three other guys decided we wanted to go out to dinner. We sat down and had a nice dinner, and everyone else headed back to the hostel. This diner was wonderful, and I really enjoyed spending some quality time with three amazing guys! Then we went back to the hostel and went to bed (many more funny stories happened here- ask me about them later if you want to hear).

Saturday:

We woke up a little early on Saturday so that we could go and see St. Chapelle, the largest stain glass cathedral in the world. This was definitely not a disappointment… it was amazingly beautiful!! Then we went to do the fat tire bike tour. This was absolutely the best decision we made the entire weekend! The tour started and ended at the Eiffel tower, so we got to see it during the day too! There is something magical (call me a girl if you want) about riding in the streets of Paris on a bike with your friends!! At one point you could even hear a man playing a violin in the streets… I felt like I was in a movie! This tour was very informational and extremely fun, and although it was only like 20 degrees outside and I couldn’t feel my body the whole time, it was totally worth it! After this, we got discounted tickets for a boat tour that night on the Sims river, so we went to the grocery store to by cheese and grapes and stuff to eat on the boat. And we are in France, so yes, we did stop at a bakery and get baguettes (well, everyone but me…although I did have one bite! I was in France, I had to!! Haha).  Then we wondered around the city a little more and sat down at a little café for coffee before heading out to the boat. Ok, I know I liked everything so far about the trip, but this part literally was the best moment of the whole weekend! I felt like I was in a movie (again)…. Eating and hanging out with my friends on the top of the boat as we passed the Eiffel tower and such while sailing on the Sims river!!! Ah, it was freaking awesome. Freaking awesome. After this, we all headed back for our last night (Praise the Lord!) at the Friends hostel.

Sunday:

We got up super early to pack up our things and head to Notre Dame Cathedral for 8:30 am mass. This service was incredible!! The entire thing was in French so I didn’t understand a word, but it didn’t even matter! The building was beautiful, and I enjoyed listening to God talking to me in a different language!! I wish I could go back every week, for I learned so much in that service even though I couldn’t understand a single word anyone was saying. After this, we ate at subway and headed back to the train station! We headed back to London, and then back to Oxford and got back to the house around 7pm. Boy, it was so nice to be home!! Then, despite the homework we had, a bunch of us sat in the kitchen (naturally) and talked and laughed about all of our different experiences that weekend as we sipped on several cups of tea.  This was absolutely the most amazing weekend of my life. The stories and memories I made with my friends will last a lifetime!!

Monday:

It was hard to have to wake up early to write an English paper, but Paris was totally worth it. It was a pretty uneventful day. I was in the group that planned and lead our community worship that night, and that was a great experience!! I love our community here. It is so hard to put into writing how much I value the people here.. what amazing people God has placed in my life!

Tuesday:

Today! Its Valentine’s day!! Yay!! It has just been a day full of classes and laughing as usual. I watched some replays of the past couple of Mavs games and did some laundry. Cameron fit himself into one of the dryers in the laundry room, and that was pretty funny! Other than that, I have been doing homework and volunteering tonight! Its been a pretty uneventful day, but I’m ok with that. I feel the love from all my friends here for sure!!

There is so much more I could say about the past week!! Unfortunately, it is past 1 am here and I am super tired. But thanks for all the prayers for me about this weekend!! It was such a great trip!!  Until next time, my final quote:

“Never underestimate the power of late night conversations in the kitchen” -CS Lewis………boy is he right about this one!! 

The Magna Carta!!

Holy cow, the past few days have been INCREDIBLE! Here is a quick summary:

Thursday: Well, I started off the day with the writing of a core paper. Yuck. Then I went to Greek. Now, I really don’t mind Greek. Given it’s a lot of hard work and the concepts can be really difficult and frustrating at times (like today), but it’s not terrible. After Greek, I had two more classes, and then we rushed off to go to a candlelight service at St. Magdalene’s college. This service was AWESOME! It was a bit of a walk and it was FREEZING, but the whole experience was totally worth it. This whole service was to commemorate the official end of the Advent (Christmas) season and to celebrate Christ’s circumcision in the temple. I had no idea that the advent season stretched out this far! It started with the chorus of boys singing, ranging from around 2^nd grade to college age. Wow, these boys can sing! The Latin songs were absolutely gorgeous! We then moved into the chapel and experienced more singing, reading of prayers, and chanting. The liturgical style is not what I am used to, but I absolutely loved it! Now, the chapel itself was absolutely breathless. I could sit there and stare at the architecture for hours. Communion was different than what I was used to, but it was very cool and I learned a lot from it. Overall, the experience was something that I will absolutely never forget! The rest of us walked back, and then Cameron and I stopped at Hussains ( cart on the side of the road that has seriously the best chips, aka fries, that I have ever had. EVER.) for dinner. That night, about 11 of us played apples to apples and laughed our hearts out!!! Then, over a cup of tea, a couple of us ended up talking until about 2am… again. These conversations are so life giving and deep, and seeing God at work in all of my friends is such a blessing. Then, I went to bed and got just a few hours of sleep to prepare me for my day in London!!

Friday-  Let me warn you, there was so much that happened this day that I won’t be able to write it all down, so ask me later if you want to hear more stories! We left for London around 8:20am. Now this group trip was paid for by our program, and we were all split up into groups that went to different parts of London. We have to do a power point presentation over it, but hey, I got a free trip to London out of it and had a BLAST! We did the research for our “project” in the morning, then had the rest of the day to do whatever we wanted, which was nice.  This was my first time in an actual train station and on a real train, and it was greatness! The group I was in went to Camden, and it was so legit. The markets were so cool, and our group learned a lot about community by observing and talking to the locals. The last thing we did was go to the British Library… which was the highlight of the morning! Well, almost. I saw a firetruck and a firestation on the way there, which was the real highlight of my morning! Haha Anywho, seeing all the old documents that were there was unreal!! There are so many I could list, but just a couple of the things that I saw was the Magna Carta, the gutenburg bible, Chaucer’s “Canterbury tails”, Leonardo Da Vinci sketches, the lyrics of beatles songs that they wrote down on paper, and the oldest fragments of the gospels that are still in existence (from the 3^rd century)!!!! There was so much more, ranging from medical books to Handle’s “messiah”….it was overwhelming and amazingly cool! After this, we attempted to all meet up with the group… epic fail. When no one has cell phones and is all scattered around London, this is very hard. Our meeting place only kind of worked, for we ended up waiting for about 2 hours for people to show up (they never did). But we sang Veggietales and danced while we waited, so it was fun! We then tried to get tickets to a play that night, but we waited too long and the prices were either too high or they were sold out… this was a bummer, but hey its only like 45 minutes away and I will be here for 3 more months. I will go to see a play eventually! Haha However as we were walking around the central area of London, we randomly ran into our other group of friends!! Hallelujah, Praise the Lord!! This was such a blessing. We then went to M&M world (4 floors of greatness) and to dinner at Spaghetti house. We had our own room and had a wonderful dinner full of relaxation and fellowship! Afterwards, we wandered around the streets of London. It took me till about 8 that night for it to hit me that I WAS IN LONDON! HOLY COW!! There was so much to do!!! Just to name a couple of things, we went to see Big Ben and the London eye at night… absolutely breathtaking. A bummer of the evening however was that it was so cold. SO cold. I have seriously never been that cold in my life. At one point, my feet were frozen to the point that it physically hurt to walk around. But it is all apart of the experience!! I normally don’t mind the cold, but holy cow this was ridiculous! After several more hours of experiencing the night life and wandering around London, we picked up our friend from another group and headed home! On the train ride back, we hit our point of exhaustion. Around 12:45am, the snorting began and didn’t stop until we pulled into oxford at 1:15am. We were all so tired and cold, and we BOOKED it back to the house! It’s usually about a 30-35 min walk and we made it in 20 min. I slept soooooooooooooo well that night!! What an incredible night it was walking and experiencing the streets of London with my friends! And we didn’t get lost or anything on the Tube station… I think that is an accomplishment.

Saturday- Today has been a wonderful and lazy day! I slept until noon, got up and went shopping for tea, and then came back and chilled with my friends! Tonight, we were supposed to go to a mosque, so a couple of us walked to where we thought it was, but it wasn’t the right event so we left haha Now this wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but it is like a wonder wonderland out there tonight because IT’S SNOWING!!! It is the most beautiful sight in the world. The whole trip there, the five of us had a massive snow ball fight! It was SO much fun! I also made a snow angel, which was beautiful if I do say so myself. We all looked like cold, wet puppies when we got back, but it was totally worth it. Now we are all inside in the warmth, drinking tea (yes, again) and getting ready to watch a movie! What a fun and relaxing day!

I am so unbelievablely thankful to be here in Oxford. This is an experience that has changed my life already, and its only been 3 weeks! This week we go to Paris, so get ready for the many stories that will happen there!

Blessings and Peace! 

Oh Puddles!

Well, it has been such a fun week thus far! There is so much that I have been meaning to blog about, and I just haven’t found the time to do it! But here we go….

Sunday- We started off the morning at a Quaker church. This was extremely interesting… I really enjoyed it though! The quaker meeting consists of everyone sitting silent in a room ,and it remains silent until (or if really) someone feels that the “spirit” is calling them to share something with the group. If they feel called, they speak. If not, they don’t. This lasts for an hour. As antsy as I am though, I really enjoyed sitting and praying for that hour! God and I had some quality bonding time. After the end of the meeting, we had tea and coffee (seriously, we drink tea after EVERYTHING here.. its freaking amazing) and then went into a room with about 6 quakers and asked them questions! It was so cool. The people there are so sweet, and I really enjoyed hearing all about what they believe and asking questions, then telling them what we believe. It was absolutely an unforgettable experience! Sunday afternoon after lunch I did homework and took a quick shutsea (or nap) before dinner. It was Cameron and Alex’s time to make dinner this time, and we had peanut butter and nutella sandwiches and ravioli (random I know, but A-they are guys and B-they actually made something this week! They got take out last week haha). It was actually really good! Then, Sunday night we went to the college service at St. Aldates church, and it was amazing! It was wonderful to worship with tons of college students, and it was awesome to see a brother in Christ get baptized! Sunday was a very relaxing yet informational day, which was very needed!

Monday- Well, I don’t have class until 3pm on this day, so I get to spend the morning by myself in the city of Oxford!! I went out and found a cool spot to do my bible study, then I went to starbucks to use their wifi to watch the mavs beat the spurs! What an awesome game…. Anyway, I went to core class at 3 and then ate dinner and prepared for 9@9, which is our community worship. We all take turns planning a week in groups, and the students who planned this week did an INCREDIBLE job! Also, we spent a lot of time praying for the family of one of our ACU professors whose son passed away suddenly on Sunday night. As sad of a situation as this was, it was so cool to see how incredible our ACU community is, for we spent a good amount of time praying for them even though we are hundreds of miles away. After worship, the group of people who I am traveling with to Paris next weekend met and planned out some of the other details of the trip. Let me tell you… this was funny. We already have so many inside jokes, especially about the hostel we are staying at, and it is so funny! We all walked away practically crying at all the hilariousness that occurred!! Oh, and I made dinner tonight! Quesadillas, rice, and chips… hope they were good! Haha they don’t have corn tortillas here, so I made something else for me haha

Tuesday- Well, we had English class! Haha our professor is hilarious, and I really enjoy that class!! Then I had Greek. Loads of Fun.  Then I had my first experience with Laundry. Ok, so Cameron and I decided to go and do laundry after Greek. So around 3:40, we head that way. Now laundry is close by, but you have to walk about 5 minutes to get there, and its not free. I guess I have been spoiled when it came to ACU’s washers and dryers being free haha Anyway, I had been saving up my 20 pence coins for sometime now, but I didn’t realize that I had to have a pound coin as well. Of course, this is the one time that I didn’t have a pound coin, so I had to negotiate with someone to borrow one from them. Well then Cameron didn’t have any either, and since everybody (and I do mean everybody) was out of the houses doing something different, we went on the hunt for a couple pound coins. We both felt like we were homeless people as we looked in the weirdest places for some money! Cameron suggested that we look in the cushions of the couch, and I thought “hey! Why not. We wont find anything though.” Well, I was wrong. We found a pound and 24 pence haha it was hilarious. After our little rummage through the house for pound coins, it was off to the laundry room! Now, you have to go down stairs to get to this room, and upon approaching it had steam coming out the doors. I felt as if I was entering into a gas chamber. Then we went to the room, where we had to wait a little bit to get a washer. I got some homework done, but of course I couldn’t focus too well between the British people coming in and out of the room, the washer freaking out and sounding like it was going to explode, and Cameron and I laughing, so I ended up calling it quits on homework haha But a couple hours later, laundry was done! We walked into the house just in time for dinner! Now after dinner, my friends Alex, Jackson, and I volunteered at Globe Café. This is an event every week held at a church for international students to come and get to talk to other people who are from different places. Our job is just to talk with them and get to know them!  (I know, the perfect job for me!!). Well, the majority of the night was spent talking to a guy from Germany. Holy cow, I don’t have the time nor the energy to explain all the funny things/ stories that I heard. Lets just say that I have never been negatively stereotyped for being an American before, and I definitely was that night! Haha of course him being from Germany,  we discussed Dirk Nowitzki and I found out that I have been pronouncing his name wrong all these years! Haha he talked and talked about the things that Germans make fun of Americans for, and it was pretty entertaining. He was super opinionated… and wouldn’t let any of us get a word in edgewise. There are so many things I could say about him, but I will just tell one story (you can ask me about the MANY more later). Upon asking him where we should visit when we go to Germany, he replied “well, I don’t know. There were beautiful places in Germany before you ruined them in WW2…” This sounds mean (and it was a little blunt) but the way in which he said it makes me laugh every time I think about it! Well after volunteering, I skyped with Madelyn and then did some homework. But then I ended up talking with some friends till the wee morning hours over several (and I do mean several) cups of tea. And when I say talk, I really mean laugh and laugh. This was a fun day!

Wednesday- Today has been pretty uneventful. I did go to the open air market today though. COOLEST PLACE EVER! Its just like the farmers market except with a ton more things and better prices. Wow it was amazing. Other than that, I’ve pretty much spent the whole day in classes or doing homework. I did have a good time dancing while doing the dishes with Cameron and Alex tonight though… we busted out some pretty legit moves. I enjoyed skyping with the friends back home too! But now, I’m so super tired and ready to go to bed! Hopefully I will actually write some of these more often…

Here is my quote of the week: “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

-C. S. Lewis