The End

 I knew that I wanted to document my time studying in London the second that I learned I would be going. Approximately two seconds after that, I promised myself that I would not get back to the states and forget to write some sort of wrap up for my London experience. Well, here I am almost two months removed from my time overseas and so far I have done just that...

Dear Self, 

I'm sorry that I broke my promise. 

I'm going to attempt to remedy that right now.

 Here comes the reflection time...

Love, 

Me

London was a dream - and just like a dream, I have woken up and am now left grasping at the hazy edges of what used to be a vivid picture. It is one of those dreams that you tell yourself to remember only to lose hold of by the end of the afternoon, and no matter how hard you try all you can recall is a shadow. I see pictures of Big Ben or the Tower Bridge and think, "Did I really live there?!" Did I really spend four months making that city a home? I spent my time in London wondering if it was real or if it was just a dream. I know now that it was a dream, because it has faded away so quickly. It took no time at all to jump back into real life here in the states and lose the vivid picture of my wonderful semester abroad. That is not to say that my experiences will not forever be a part of me, but I will always find myself grasping at faded edges convincing myself that it actually happened.

There is a sharp contrast between the way I lived life in London and how I experience life on a daily basis in the states. I don't have multiple personalities or anything - it's just when I was in London, every moment was cherished and observed. For example, "Awww guys this is the last time we will buy bread from the grocery store on the third Tuesday of the month while wearing tennis shoes and holding an umbrella..." You think I'm exaggerating, and yes OK I am a bit, but every moment was special there.

I wonder what life would be like for me now if I took joy in every little moment the way that I did in London. God's glory is much bigger than the beautiful city of London, so why is it that it was much easier to see there? Because I was constantly looking. I guess I need to open my eyes a little now!

Since I have been back for almost two months now, I can examine the things that I miss about London without just responding "everything." I can also see the things that I appreciate about 'Murica better now, too. So here it goes:

Top 10 things I miss about London:
1. Living in a city bursting with history
2. Traveling
3.Walking to the grocery store
4. Working at the Fulbright Commission
5. Traveling
6. Nandos/Ben's Cookies/Bourough Market
7.Not having a phone
8. Living with some of my best friends
9. Being able to say, "No big deal I just live in London..."
10. Everything. I lied that is still my answer...

Top 10 things I missed about home:
1. Diet Coke
2. Friends and Family
3. Panera's Broccoli Cheddar soup
4. People letting you touch their pets. Chill out people they're dogs not people...
5. Diet Coke
6. Southern Gentlemen
7. Driving
8. My dumb dog
9. My books
10. Free refills...of Diet Coke

I feel like I'm writing the last chapter of a book that's been in the back of my mind for years. I have dreamed about studying abroad for as long as I can remember. The story in my mind never included London - it had me sitting in French cafes everyday sipping espresso and eating croissants - but London pushed me out of my comfort zone. It was a blessing and a challenge and I am thankful for every experience and memory that are now a part of the much longer (sometimes more boring) book of my life.

So I'm back in the homeland after an incredible adventure. You might be asking yourself, "How do you spend the summer after a semester like that?!" Simple. You migrate down to the land of 8 billion degrees and muggy, Alabama, for an internship planning national youth conferences and working with Montgomery teens! Though my adventures here are, in their own way, just as exciting as my time in London, I won't be sharing them quite the same. This summer will be a blessing, a challenge, and above all a time of personal growth and I'm thrilled for the opportunity!

Cheers!

In other home news:

Mark graduated! Congrats Spud!

And so did Dan Dan the Dentist Man!

And this is the newest member of our family, Zero.

France Round 2 - Second is the Best

I have now been back from London for an entire week... it already feels like a lifetime ago. I have realized that I have neglected to finish writing about my last weeks across the pond. However, it doesn't seem fair to have to write all about the most exciting trip while sitting in Knoxville, TN, so I have decided to do France in pictures. And honestly France is too beautiful for words anyway...

My wonderful Aunt Swannee and I explored Paris, Mt. Saint Michel, and the Normandy Beaches before ending our time in good ole London:

Sacre Coeur at night...in the rain...

Boat tour down the Seine

Bike Tour of Versailles

So many pastries

Picnic in the Gardens of Versailles

Grounds of Versailles

Gardens of Versailles and the Palace

Tulips are my favorite

Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower with Swannee

We watched the lights turn on

Fondu restaurant where they serve wine in baby bottles...

Our trusty steed, Lori

Mt. Saint Michel

Mt. Saint Michel

Mt. Saint Michel

William the Conqueror's Castle

William the Conqueror's Castle

William the Conqueror's Grave

City of Caen

Beaches of Normandy

Cemetery

Quite an experience

Well I just liked these fields...

Fulbright Fun

As a part of the Global Leadership Scholars Program, I spent the past six weeks interning for the US-UK Fulbright Commission. I was a real workin' woman. The Fulbright Commission is a government appointed commission responsible for every single Fulbright Award that is given to any UK or US student. A Fulbright Award is a very prestigious scholarship that is given to postgraduates to work on their masters degrees overseas (Postgrad Awards) or to professors to lecture (Scholar Awards). A Fulbright Scholarship is the equivalent of a Rhodes Scholarship: very prestigious and VERY competitive. You get a Fulbright as a Postgrad and you can get into almost any grad school that you want. Being a Fulbrighter opens a lot of doors, and working with them this semester has opened a door for me because of how much I have learned. My time at the Fulbright Commission was memorable to say the least.

We worked in an office directly next to the Battersea Power Station, which is an out-of-use station that used to control all of the electricity for the city of London. The Power Station is now under construction to become an event hall and office space...but right now it is just lots of dump trucks and dust in the middle of nowhere. It is a beautiful location right on the Thames, but it is definitely in a developing part of the city. I have to take the tube about 30 minutes and then walk another 30 or so to get to the office because the tube doesn't go out that far. The walk wouldn't seem so long if there weren't construction workers lining the streets ready to whistle at a moment's notice. However, I felt so cool every day hopping on the tube, waking with a purpose, and not feeling like a tourist. I would scoff at the people that didn't know obvious things like don't stand on the left on the escalators, or my special favorite, the people that would take pictures of the tube...it's not that picturesque I promise. Unfortunately it was probably one of those "what you think you look like, what you actually look like" moments for me...

What I think I look like...

What I actually look like...

Work was a dream for me. Maybe it was the academic atmosphere that I enjoyed, or maybe it was that I am destined to work in a not-for-profit and be broke my whole life, but whatever it was the Fulbright Commission was exactly where I wanted to be. Apart from the actual commissioners, there are 6 full time staff members and anywhere from 1-3 interns at a time. This makes for a very intimate work environment and allowed me to take on projects that in a larger environment I wouldn't have touched. My coworkers were as follows:

-Michael (The Boss) is the flamboyant neat freak who speaks with a British accent even though he is from Chicago.
-Lauren (Go-To Girl) is the American recent graduate who is quick witted, has a story for everything, and orchestrates 4 o'clock dance parties to "I Like Big Butts."
-Monique (Don't Mess With Me) is the too-cool-for-school South African whose desk is a black hole but she manages to be on top of every little thing that goes on.
-Rebecca (Real Life Brit) is the young, sweet, recently married, only actual Brit in the office who is kind no matter how annoying the scholar on the other end of the phone conversation is.
-Moray (Office Manager)...we don't really know what she does.

Needless to say, it was a diverse and upbeat work environment.

Quite an intimidating building to see out the window at work...

I spent a lot of my time doing administrative tasks to help keep the office running, but most of the time I had the chance to be a part of some really interesting and "inside" jobs for the commission. I got to do some work on their website, and for any college students or teachers out there here is my shameless plug for a great opportunity: www.fulbright.co.uk check it out! I had the chance to work with the applications that were coming in for their summer programmes, which are for rising sophomores and juniors in college and are VERY competitive. We received over 800 applications for about 40 spots for the three-week exchange programmes. I got to attend a commission event where I met current and past Fulbrighters who are all very impressive people with impressive stories to tell. I had the chance to design, edit, and write flyers, acceptance letters, and other informative documents that will be going out all over the world. I truly got a taste of what the Fulbright Commission is all about.

More than anything, I had a blast and learned valuable lessons that will help me along the road. (Mostly what NOT to do in an interview or application, but useful nonetheless.) The best part of the job was that when opening up the applications that were mailed in, the rule was: you keep any treasures you find. I accumulated some jewels of photographs people sent of themselves, candy, and even a CD of a girl playing a harp. Sometimes when reading the applications got too stressful you would here one of the girls moan, "harpppp" with her head down on a growing pile of papers, and we knew it was time to take a break and listen to our new favorite CD to relax.

There are so many things that I will miss about my time with Fulbright. For example, the family lunches when the whole staff would gather and have "sanctity" time when no one was allowed to talk about work. Or the girls calling me "Queen Intern" and giving me life advice; their favorite was "take the money and drink your life away" when it came to choosing a career, but you could tell that they love what they do. But my favorite part of the day was the exchange with Michael (The Boss) when he would pop his head into my office out of the blue and yell:

"LAURA!" (prounounced "La-ra"...he was very proud that he could say it right instead of the common "Lo-ra")

"Yes, Michael?"

"Oh, nothing. I just wanted to say your name. You're a star. I'm giving you a raise!"

"Thanks!"

"Yes. Your salary just went from nothing to nothing. Would you like a cup of tea?"

"No thank you, I'm good."

"Oh good. I'll bring you one." 

Tea. So much tea. Always.
Fulbright really was my cup of tea!

Paris je t'aime - France Round One

  Paris stole my heart.

I have been looking forward to going to Paris since the last time I left probably 15 years ago and with each French class I took and every classy French movie I watched this desire to return grew. However, I was somehow surprised that the City of Lights lived up to my expectations and my own idealized memories. It was a whirlwind of a trip that was painfully short, but just long enough to remind me why this beautiful city is the object of so much romanticizing. It was perfectly lovely. 

Four of us hopped on a train on a Friday night and arrived at our hostel in time to meet Clay, the overly enthusiastic Canadian guy in our hostel room, who proceeded to tell us all about his experiences in Amsterdam. He spoke with a distinctly Canadian accent except for when he said "Amsterdam," which came out in the most New-York way possible sounding more like "Ayum-staa-dayum." I didn't know that word could be that many syllables long. The hostel served breakfast of entire baguettes with Nutella packets. It was going to be a good day.

We started making our way to the Eiffel Tower taking the most roundabout way possible in order to see as much of Paris as we could in our limited time. We saw the Louvre and the Tuileries then walked down the Champs-Élysées to L'Arc de Triomphe. We stopped in the delicious La Durée for some Macarons. If there's one thing I can do in French it is order food. I may be more timid than I should be when talking to people on the street or asking questions, but put a rose petal macaron in front of me and by golly I'm fluent. After risking our lives to take pictures in front of L'Arc de Triomphe, we made our way to the Eiffel Tower stopping only for a nutella crêpe on the way. This was a big food weekend for some of my travel buddies who had never had a crêpe OR a Prince Cookie before...we fixed that real quick. 

When we got to the Eiffel Tower, we were disappointed to find out that only one elevator was working because of construction of some kind and that the line to go up to the top was over two hours long. Having a very limited amount of time to see the city, we decided that we couldn't spend that long in line and would rather see other things. With a heavy heart I walked away from La Tour Eiffel. We enjoyed the rest of our day eating some authentic French food and walking around the gorgeous city and saw Notre Dame by night, which was breathtaking. We were about to head back to our hostel, but decided that since we did not get to go up the Eiffel Tower, we would at least walk by it at night to see it lit up. When we got there at about 11:30 pm, we realized that the elevator was still creeping up the side of the tower! We broke into a run hoping to get there before it closed down for the night. There was no line whatsoever and we practically walked straight onto the elevator...We spent midnight on top of the Eiffel Tower. Talk about a romantic comedy waiting to happen. I was just waiting for the male lead to pop around the corner with a dozen red roses and a cheesy song to roll us into the credits...needless to say THAT did not happen, but it was quite a fairytale anyway. It's not a bad way to start April if you ask me. 

The next day we took a train out to Versailles. We did not know this when we were planning, but April 1st is the opening day of the fountains in the Versailles Gardens, so it was probably the busiest day of the year. We spent so long waiting in line that by the time we got to the Palace, we realized that we wouldn't have time to do both the Gardens and the Palace itself. This was a huge letdown, but we couldn't really complain. We wandered around the beautiful, vast Gardens for hours and enjoyed every second of it. We sat on the edge of the biggest fountain bathed in sunshine and watched it turn on for the first time this season. It was magnificent! Once again I felt like I was in a movie. I know it's the wrong country, but I was waiting for Mr. Darcy to walk up beside me in the Gardens. A girl can dream, right? 

It was a short trip, and a few more things went wrong than we would have liked, but all in all you can't beat Paris in the Spring. Luckily for me, I have the great fortune to go back to France in about a week! My internship in London is about to wrap up, but instead of crossing back over the pond just yet, I'm going to head back to France with the wonderful company of my Aunt Swannee. 

La vie est belle!

Blast From the Past - Fam Jam in Belgium

Waffles and chocolates and beer, OH MY!

Dad...

What could be better than having my parents come visit me in London? Having my parents come visit me in London and getting to travel to our old stomping ground: Brussels, Belgium. My parents had been traveling around Scotland and England for their 25th Wedding Anniversary, they picked me up in London, and we all hopped on a plane to Brussels. I guarantee that there were waffles in our hands within an hour of the plane hitting the ground. One of the first phrases we learned as kids when we moved to Belgium was "Une gaufre, s'il vous plaît," however I did not even need to use it. Perhaps this is because with the drool dripping from my mouth, saying, "One waffle, please," would have just been redundant. My goodness those waffles are good. There are two things you need to know: 1) My family loves Belgian waffles. 2) My Dad got a fancy knew camera for their anniversary. Put these two together and you get a ton of waffle pictures... Or just a ton of pictures in general. There were many times that I had to take the camera away from him in order to keep us moving at a reasonable pace. "Dad, just because the light keeps changing does NOT mean that you have to stop to take pictures of the same building every ten minutes..."

Manneken Pis

The first night we were there, we had the Brussels experience wandering around the Grand Place and stopping by to see our old friend the Manneken Pis (the statue of a little boy that according to legend saved the town by peeing on a bomb to extinguish it). He gets dressed in costumes for special occasions and holidays, though this time he was just wearing his birthday suit. The first time we saw him right after we moved, he was dressed in an Elvis get up! It made us feel right at home. We ate mussels and frites and gawked at all of the chocolate displays that peppered the streets. Having rented a car, we drove out of the city to our hotel in Waterloo about 30 minutes outside of Brussels.

The next morning we got up at a freakishly early hour to get started on our day of nostalgia. We began at the Butte de Lion, the monument to the Battle of Waterloo, which is a large hill topped with a giant statue of a lion. However, when we arrived, the monument was not nearly as impressive as the gathering of Ferraris in the parking lot. There must have been over 50 of these sleek cars lined up and ready for some sort of rally. Needless to say, my dad whipped his camera out faster than you can say "sports car" and was going to town. Once we pried him away from the shiny cars, we started to make our way up to the base of the daunting staircase. In a moment of pure stupidity I exclaimed, "How much will you give me if I run up all of the stairs?" "Five Euros." "Deal!" And off I went... Now, this might not have been so bad if it hadn't been for the fact that I had woken up about 20 minutes before and was wearing knee-high boots that weigh who knows how much... At about step 200 of 226 I nearly collapsed. Luckily my dad stood at the bottom and took pictures of me running up the entire time (not a good angle let me tell you)  and was there to capture my exhaustion on film. I ran up the last 26 steps out of stubbornness, but sadly did not get my reward. The view from the top is beautiful and I enjoyed looking out at the country side and imagining how different life would have turned out if we had stayed in Waterloo. My mom was determined to find our house from the top of the Butte de Lion, and when she puts her mind to something she doesn't give up...ever. And by golly she found it! Technically she found a corner of the roof, but it counts.  The walk down the staircase was much more pleasant as we checked returning to the Butte de Lion off our bucket list.

So gross...

Next stop, the grocery store? Yep. The grocery store. Sounds exciting right? Well it was for us. We spent about an hour walking through the aisles looking at the brands that we don't get in the U.S. and the things that we remember from 12 years ago. My favourites included the bread slicing machine (you slice your own bread) and the hot dogs floating in jars. I thought that was nasty as a kid, and I think it's nasty now. There is just nothing natural about hot dogs in jars. Another thing you need to know: the women on my mom's side of the family have a scary ability to find someone that they know ANYWHERE they go. My grandmother could walk into a McDonald's in Antarctica and find a long lost friend or family member. My mother inherited that ability. As we are standing in line to check out she starts nudging us asking of we recognize the woman in the next line. "No mom, we're in Waterloo and haven't been here for 12 years we're not going to run into anyone that we know." We were so wrong. My mom then walked up to my little brother's preschool teacher and reintroduced herself. The teacher remembered my mom and they had a conversation in the grocery store about old times. It was one of the strangest moments I can remember. I should not have underestimated the power of the Williams Woman Curse...I wonder if I will grow into that?

We took a picnic to the ruins of the Abbey that we used to go visit and enjoyed a beautiful, sunny day and each others company. After walking through the Abbey (and breaking my camera) we began a search for the Bluebells in Halle's wood. Every spring the Forest floor explodes in bluebells leaving the forest a blazing blue color that is absolutely breathtaking. We knew that we were a little early for the bluebells to be blooming, but we decided to give it a try anyway. We found the woods and enjoyed walking through the paths even though the bluebells, sadly, were not there yet. We must have been about a week too soon and I bet if we went back now, the floor would be covered. This didn't stop us from taking cheesy pictures in the flowers that were there, however.

...what it will look like.

What it looked like for us...

Our old house

We went from the woods to see our old house. It was such a beautiful, regal home and it was very strange standing on the other side of the wrought iron gate looking into the yard that used to be our playground. I could see my bedroom window and the trees that we spent hours climbing. It was a strange sensation. It smelled the same. The atmosphere was so familiar, but at the same time, the house appeared vacant and empty giving it the air of a dream or half-realized memory. I think it was hard on my parents seeing it empty when it used to be so full and vibrant with four kids running around and growing up. Nevertheless, it was fun to see and I'm glad we went. It truly is a beautiful home. We then made our way to the old school. This was especially strange for me because most of my memories from that time were at that school. We were able to walk around and peer in windows and surprisingly I could pick out the desks that I sat at in each classroom. It is bizarre the kinds of things you remember.
We wrapped up our night at our favorite restaurant that was just as good as we remembered, even though it has changed names.

I did not intend for this to get so long...so I will wrap it up with a quick summary! We spent the next visiting the Atomium and Mini Europe and then wandered around Brussels and the Grand Place again. We flew back into London and got ready for a marathon day of London-sightseeing. It was fun to get to show my parents around my city and I didn't get lost once! (That's a big accomplishment.) After seeing most of the token London destinations, we went to see Singing in the Rain at the Palace Theatre. It was a perfect end to our trip! It was such a happy show full of impressive vocals and stunning dance sequences. I admit, I sat silently weeping through the entire second half because it made me realize how much I miss being on stage, but I enjoyed it greatly.

Saying goodbye to wonderful parents is not easy, but the fact that I will be home in less than a month made it much easier! I was so thankful to see them and thankful for the opportunities left in my short time here. I could not have asked for a better weekend!

Singin' in the Rain!

The Grand Place

The Atomium

Mini Europe