You know your life’s gettin’ a little too rowdy when your “reality check” is returning to your dorm room abroad in England—for the mere reason that it’s almost exam time and I do. not. want. to. study. Apologies for not blahgging in nearly 3 weeks, but my wifi has been super limited and that’s been the worst of my complaints during this time. Which basically amounts to no complaints. Cheers/ salud to the last 3 weeks. Probably the most exciting and memorable of my young yittle yife so far. I’ve been EVERYWHERE! YAY! I feel so cultured. Just don’t ask me the names of any buildings in my pictures. I can tell you what country they’re all in, and likely some cool, random fact about each, but names… no can do. Other than, “pretty building #1, #2, etc.” I’ve been contemplating so much over the best way to do this blahg without breaking it up too much and without jamming it into one LONG post, so I’ve compromised with myself with one blahg post consisting of super brief subsection descriptions of each place I’ve been. Yeah? We’re good? Cool. Feel the love.

Just to clarify, I haven’t had class for the past 4 weeks. I’m not just playing British hooky, OK? Breathe. So, you know I started in Ireland for St. Pat’s day. Came home (“home” ← HA.) for a couple of days to work on my helluva Coffee presentation, went to Edinburgh, Scotland, came home for another couple days mostly to get washed every last piece of my clothes, and then headed to LONDON!

And that’s where this all starts. London. We were there for 6 days. Seems like years ago now. I’m a boss at navigating the underground railroad (tube) nowadays. I usually wander like a lost puppy until I’m forced to find my way, but I killed it once I figured it out. I’ve learned the key is to never smile when you pass people, wear headphones, fake sleep on the train, and look hipster. And walk really fast as if not doing so will allow someone is to mug you. Which is possible. I can’t help but smile, but I did do the rest of those things. I even helped a mom with a stroller (push chair for my English peeps reading) down some stairs, which definitely made me look like a Mississippi girl. Gah, I love moms. And babies. London was lovely. I posted a picture of “London Bridge” with a caption that (if you know better) makes me look like such a dumbster. London Bridge apparently really did fall down. And the picture I posted is of the tower bridge. Seriously, self. Get your shiz straight before putting stuff all over the insta and fb. The weather was freezing (which believe it or not, really does affect your time in places I’ve come to learn) and Emily (my little Australian desert girl) hated feeling hypothermic—we all did—and thus, we spent as much time indoors as possible. We ate a TON (this trend continues throughout the next 3 weeks) and drank lots of tea. And the DEF highlight of London was the West End shows we saw. Singing in the Rain was my favorite and Matilda is a close follow up, but should potentially be bumped up to first place since we WORKED for those tickets. Waited in line for 3.5 hours at the crack of dawn for them. Freezing to death. Ya little twits.

Then we boarded a tour bus that seemed like the sketchiest thing we could have ever chosen to do at the moment (turned out to be SUPER AWESOME) early, early on the morning of April 4^th. We made two new friends pretty much immediately (meet them below) and then we became the freaking fenomenal food-loving five. I just made that up.

First stop was in Brugge, Belgium where (ya better believe) I stocked up on some Belgian chocolate, and ate a Belgian waffle that nearly blew my clothes off. I don’t even remember chewing it. It was ridic.

Then we headed to Amsterdam, The Netherlands (← That looks super awkward typed out, so apologies if that’s not correct…), where everything’s legal. Look, ma, no rules! Drugs? Fine. Selling sex? Fine. Bikers that have their own road and run people over? Fine. Pushing cars into the canal? Fine. And guess what? I liked it. Because it was beautiful. There’s a central canal that looked so nice at night and I was more than anything SO intrigued by the red light district. Cameras are strictly prohibited and there are people who walk the street incognito who will throw your camera into the canal if you’re caught snapping a quick shot of a nearly-naked-chick. Who, by the way, stand there super scantily dressed, like, they might as well have been wearing nothing, TEXTING. They stand there in the windows of their bedrooms TEXTING. Can you believe that? Is that sexy now? I mean, it’s their job. I guess you can text on the job if ya wanna. And then the next day, we watched a man carve some wooden clogs and tasted lots of cheese. Nom. Foooood. FREE food.

And I’ll always remember my time here because it’s where I found out that I got into Dental Hygiene school! Hooray! I was just about to go to bed when I heard the news from my mailbox back in Louisiana via my mom. I made Chase put clothes on so we could go to the bar downstairs and have a celebratory drink, but then I quickly decided I didn’t feel like doing that so we instead jumped on the bed and then went to sleep. Wee! I have a future! Bed jumping!

Then we vroom vroomed on over to Germany, where again, it was freezing. BUT, I’m really good at doing a German accent, so that was a perk. Just get a lotta spit in your mouth and you’ve nailed it. A river cruise down the Rhine River and some wine tasting came first followed by a night of Karaoke with some people we met in our hotel (we stayed in HOTELS, not HOSTELS! Living the high life, I tell ya!). I sang “Chicken fried” with some other American gal. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Get off me. It was fun. Also, the exit signs on the interstate in Germany say, “Ausfahrt,” which as far as I’m concerned is pronounced [ass-fart]. There, I said it. I’m so mature. Germany was pretty and I wish we had had more time there.

Prague was next. It’s in the Czech Republic for you non-geographiers like myself. I wasn’t impressed. I hate to say it. 🙁 The place was beautiful, but the people there were not nice. At all. I didn’t meet a single kind person except for our tour guide, Tijo, who I would have married on the spot had he not mentioned his girlfriend 600 times. While I was there, I was totes diggin’ it. But looking back over all, Prague is a blur, and I have mostly bad memories with a few really good ones. I’m thinking that should be the other way around. That’s not to say I wouldn’t go back and give the suga another shot, because I def would. Me and Sebastian got some cheap beer (that was a perk) at a cool place and then climbed (took an elevator up) a tower and looked out and then we went to a pub crawl. Also, the currency there makes you feel like you’re rich, when you’re really not. See pic below. ←GOOD memories! BAD memories → We got stranded at 2 a.m. on the side of the road when a train dropped us off where we “thought” our hotel was and it wasn’t. No one helped us. The taxi drivers were evil and we ended up paying them WAY more than we should have out of desperation. And I thought they were going to kill us. But then again, I think every creepy man is trying to kill me. So that’s neither here nor there.

We stopped in Bratislava, Slovakia for just a short time—pretty much just enough time to look around, eat a meal, buy a postcard and peace out. And the only pictures I have to document this part of the trip are as follows: