kiri and laura go to london

This past saturday, my room mate Kiri and I made a trip to London!  We ate egg sandwiches for breakfast, visited the National Gallery where we saw work by Michelangelo, DaVinci, Picasso, VanGogh, Monet, Manet, (lots of impressionists!), Surat, Turner, ... blah-di-blah. lots of famous artists! but no pictures allowed inside the museum! We walked right out of the museum into Trafalgar Square where we instantly became part of a rally in support of Egypt that just happened to be going on right on the steps of the museum.  Then we walked around St. James Park and watched the pelicans that live there.  We saw Buckingham Palace and then stopped at a Japanese restaurant for lunch.  Then in the afternoon we strolled along Westminster bridge with all the other tourists and viewed the London Eye ferris wheel up close and personal.  Then we headed into the Cathedral for Evensong (saturday evening mass) at Westminster Abby.  The light flooded in through the tall stained glass windows and the gothic architecture kept me staring at the ceiling for much of the service. The Westminster choir was wonderful and made even better by the amazing acoustics of the chapel.  Then we headed home to Oxford to catch dinner and get some work done.

St. Valentines

First things first. here is a super old picture of Craig and I. I think we are 18 in this photo (hint: now we are 20)!  Anyways in honor of valentines day I thought i'd post it.

Moving on... today i overheard the story of St. Valentine from the smart British people sitting next to me at breakfast.  Apparently back in the day, soldiers weren't allowed to marry before going to war because it was thought that they would lose their courage in battle if they knew they had a wife waiting for them at home.  So St. Valentine would marry lovers in secret before the soldiers got shipped out.

Anyways. on this particular valentines day, Craig and I celebrated by exchanging badminton rackets and flowers (hyacinths and paper-whites, they smell heavenly).  Then we went out to a delicious lunch, I had a ciabatta bread sandwich with mozzarella,  sliced artichoke, and avocado, and craig had his usual BLT, followed by cream tea, at a new restaurant bakery we were trying out... La Patiserre.  Cream tea, for those of you who have not been over here and experienced it first hand... is the amazingness of warm scones, which always have raisins, with clotted cream and jam along with a pot of tea of your choice (today we had blueflower tea) with sugar and milk.  Anyways.  Then we caught the tail end of a free concert at the famous Oxford Carfax tower, which evidently has free lunchtime concerts every monday. Tonight we are planning on cooking our own dinner... shrimp scampi with white wine anyone? and then attending the ice cream social the JCR (junior common room= english equivalent of student body leaders) is hosting.  England decided to grace us with sun today so all in all things have been pretty perfect!

I even got a letter in the post today, to round off my lovely morning!  Bookmarks with inspirational sayings always useful, this one made me smile!   Snail mail is the best, thanks Aunt Nancy! Mmmm, I will have to sit down and do some old fashioned correspondence, not to mention send out those valentines that are sitting half-made on my desk! I figure late valentines are better than no valentines, besides getting mail is nice any day, so it doesn't really have to be on valentines day. haha.

To top off our morning craig and I popped into a fair-trade store where i picked up some info about getting involved locally with ways to promote fair-trade.


Hope you are all having a wonderful day where ever this February 14th finds you!  hugs and kisses from England! -xoxo

Summer 2011

This summer is rather up in the air for me.  I know I will have to be taking classes, so part of my summer will be spent at SMCM hopefully soaking up the sun while windsurfing, working on the campus farm, and maybe getting a job lifeguarding at the gym.
Whatever I end up doing this summer I will hopefully make enough money to go on a few adventures...
I've had my eye on these two, although I suppose I will just have to wait and see what this summer brings.

4 days spent hiking in Shenandoah:
http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/weekend/shb.html#sec1

and 8 days kayaking and hiking the Canadian Rockies:
http://www.rei.com/adventures/trips/namer/canada_rockies.html#sec1

Herbrarium!