spring break 2009, part one: amsterdam.

i decided to break spring break up into four parts: amsterdam & paris with kelsey, then florence (with the ACE boys/yvette) and barcelona with riley. this is because... well, spring break was a loooonnnngggg time and i can't even remember half of it.

amsterdam:

amsterdam was brilliant in the sense that it embodied what "spring break" should really be about - rest. it didn't start out that way, though. after kelsey arrived thursday night (april 2nd; we left the next morning), we hung out, had some mcdonald's, chatted a bit. kelsey decided to sleep before we woke up for our 450AMish train to gatwick airport. i, however, did not. i instead spent the entire night on facebook chat with ben, tiffany, and the general new york crowd that was obviously still awake thanks to the time difference.

i woke kelsey up in what i thought was enough time to get dressed, make sure i'd locked my valuables in the safe in my room, and clear out all foods with an "eat by" date in my refrigerator/cabinet. we had the most hilarious spread of yogurt, strawberries, milk and krispy kreme donuts. oh, and sesame bagels with cream cheese. so we ate. next thing you know, we have five or ten minutes to haul our butts to st. pancras to catch the train. so there were two girls running down pentonville road at 445AM to catch a train to the airport. we ended up missing it. fail. but we caught a later one and made it to the airport on time.

the flight to amsterdam was brief - only an hour or so, and we got some wel-deserved sleep before landing. upon arrival at the passport control booth, the guys were being totally awkward while stamping our passports ("why are you here?" "we're on holiday." "what?" "it's spring break." "OHHHHH SPRING BREAAAAKKKK YEAHHHHHH.")

anyway, we take a train to amsterdam central (double-decker trains are hilarious, PS) and walk to our boat hostel, the friesland, docked just by the NEMO science museum. we checked in, and BAM! we basically crashed for a good part of the day because we were both exhausted. it was such a tiny room, i don't know how i didn't have a panic attack from being so enclosed. i had bottom bunk while kelsey had the top, and it was good times. we were sweating, thanks to the heater that was on, which we idn't realize until the next morning when we were checking out. but after waking up from our long naps, we decided to walk around, grab a beer, and just relax.

the next morning, the weather was decidedly blah. we had the most incredible breakfast on the boat, though. ham slices, toast with butter/jam/chocolate-marshmallow-fluff spread, cheese, greek yogurt (ew for me, yum for kels), corn flakes, orange and apple juice. for the record, food is how i measured the ranking of my favorite cities over spring break, so you'll be getting detailed accounts of what i had to eat. we checked out of the friesland and walked all the way over to the flying pig, my first legitimate hostel, where we'd be staying until it was time to leave for paris. this place is ridiculous. there's a bar attached to the reception area, a room in the back for... partaking in amsterdam's biggest attraction, and roomy/comfortable beds in awkwardly-themed rooms. the hostel was a savior for having free internet access, too. so we checked in and dropped our stuff off.

now, i have to say that one of the main transportation methods in amsterdam is by bicycle. and ever since the whole divorce situation, i've not been on a bike (mainly because, in moving out, it's been misplaced or TAKEN or who knows what). so that's been about, what, five years of not riding? kelsey and i thought it would be fun to rent bikes and ride around but IT WAS NOT. at least, 60% of the time (because i'd say i enjoyed about 40% of the ride). bike paths are filled with PEOPLE WHO DO NOT PAY ATTENTION AND WALK IN FRONT OF BIKERS. sometimes you ride on the same narrow street as cars, so when you are me and have horrible balance issues, you freak out and pull over because hurting yourself is better than damaging someone's car and needing to drop mad cash on repairs. i crashed into a scooter while making a turn because there was someone turning at the same corner but headed in the different direction and i thoguht we were going to crash. i had a slight meltdown later. it was... ridiculous. fun, i mean, because i love biking, but ridiculous as well. plus the bike was too big for me. plus it had legit brakes where you pedal back (none of this handbraking business). so.

anyway, kelsey and i spent a lot of time at the hostel because it was filled with younger people. we had a great time just walking around and feeling uncomfortable by the redlight district window girls and it was nice.

foods i consumed include: a quarter pounder with cheese/chicken mcnuggets with sweet and sour sauce/bitteballen/fruit and yogurt (i tried to make it my goal to try one cultural and one traditional mcdonald's food while abroad). strawberries with whipped cream (my dessert every night we were there), cheese and pepperoni pizza slices, belgian-style fries with cheddar cheese sauce, pasta, a buger from burger bar, a bite of kelsey's falafel from maoz. a chocolate-covered waffle with strawberries and whipped cream on top. chocolate cake.

excellent times. amsterdam, land of desserts.

there are pictures up on facebook. but, i mean, whatever. i'll just show them to you when i get home if you haven't seen them.

i'm sorry i'm a failure at blogging

consider, if you will, that i live in a place not too different from new york, and i think you'll understand why it's really hard to scrounge up any sort of interesting blog entries. though kelsey's been to visit (which was excellent! unfortunately, i barely remember any of the trip besides skyping with frank in my kitchen, going to the london eye/the national gallery/buckingham palace/st. james' park/the place of westminster and taking care of my unfortunately sick roommate jessica after her friend kim left - it was messy), not much else has happened since, well, february.

there are now 25 days until i leave for new york, and i couldn't be more excited. hopefully, the plane ride will go smoothly (over spring break, i was not a big fan of plane travel, and even though british airways is superlegit, i'm done with flying for a while).

but it's not like i don't have things planned in the coming weeks. i still have papers that need to be written, exams that need to be taken, and a fair list of things that i've not yet done that NEED TO GET DONE - including going to the markets, the incredibly dorky visitation of platform nine and three-quarters, etc.

i plan to post immediately after this with a recap of spring break. please don't hate me.

nothing remotely exciting is happening.

brief update:

- last night was the oscars, and i'm so so so so happy that kate winslet and sean penn won! everyone was saying that kate would be upset by meryl, and that mickey was on his way to winning, but i think sean deserved it (and kate more for RR, but whatever. we'll take what we get). keep in mind that it ran until 5AM my time... and i had 10AM class. needless to say, i'm running off minimal sleep.

- i have two papers due in two/three days. and then the other two due in a week. fail.

- i'm making ACE face-in-hole pictures. i've made us into the jackson 5 (otherwise known as the bennett 5) and the spice girls.

- i'm trying to be a better catholic this lenten season. we'll see if i actually make it to a church for ash wednesday, given my need to be in class, but i'll give something up for lent and go to church.

mixtapes & midterms.

needed a catchy title. made my _FFA friend georgie a mixtape, and am listening to it now.

nothing new on the life front, really. bought the necessities for woo-woos last weekend and had a couple in the dorm to celebrate the failure that is valentine's day. consumed a hellacious amount of lindt chocolate truffles & oreos. v. excellent day.

since then, it's just been very exhausting. saw shun-kin at the barbican for modern drama in performance & it was totally brilliant, for being entirely in japanese, necessitating annoying subtitles, and for running straight through without an interval. two midterm papers due this week (for my english classes), two more due at the beginning of next week (for my politics classes).

saw an improv show in this tiny room on the second floor of some pub. BEST SHOW EVER. rivals UCB in hilarity. highlights included: stevemantha the whorish hermaphrodite, "this is a tale and a half, so long that when i reach the end, there'll still be 50% left to tell," and the musical version of the lives of others.

heard about the shenanigans going on in kimmel back @ NYU. my reaction: are you kidding me? i go to europe and people start rioting in the streets and barricading themselves in a part of the student centre? ugh.

no immediate plans for the weekend besides paper-writing. this blog is a pain in the ass to update, PS.

i'm neglectful & for that, i apologize.

so apparently, members of the family are crushed that i've not posted in a while. here you go.

over the past... what, two weeks, now? i've been to bath/stonehenge & gotten a lot of work done. i'm convinced that stonehenge is just a landing port for the aliens who REALLY colonized england and then the entire world. bath is the most adorable little area ever, and i should've gone to the spa except hi i don't have that kind of cash money to just be spending on massages and whatnot. i would post pictures but i'm trying to just make this a fast post.

i'm supposed to be in madrid this weekend, and i tried leaving thursday but stansted airport was snowed in, and so i couldn't leave to visit kelsey. i'm so crushed, because it would've been a really great weekend and now i'm not sure if i'll get a chance to make it to madrid before the end of the semester. on the plus side, we've already started planning our trip to spring break, with a few credit card mishaps! london --> amsterdam --> paris --> marseille. i'm gonna try and go to florence for the second week and spend some time with my ACE loves, or i might just, i don't know, stay home in london. we'll see.

today is valentine's day, as i am sure you are aware. i will be spending the day running errands and eating tons of chocolatey things in an effort to cancel out the intense amounts of confusion and anger i currently feel, as i am thinking about all of the places i could be right now instead of london. happy valentine's day to everyone back home/wherever you are.

i'll post a little more often, but to be fair, life is really not that exciting here, haha.

snow, the super bowl and ridiculousness: all the makings of the beginning of february.

i can't believe it's already february. time is flying by here!

last night was the super bowl. you would think that as a yankees fan, i can appreciate a solid team with a winning history behind them. false. i think the steelers & their fans are so ridiculously intense and trashy (and what's up with those terrible towels? a towel is not bad-ass/"terrible." it's just cotton. end of story). so i went to a super bowl party filled with american expatriates at some local bar, and was crushed to watch the cardinals lose to the steelers by SUCH FEW POINTS. i left at halftime because i was annoyed with the old women in yellow feather boas cheering all the time, then came back because 1) it was snowing mad lots outside, 2) i was walking home alone, and 3) I WAS MISSING BRUCE. but we left somewhere around the beginning of the 4th quarter.

we walked home in crazy amounts of snow and took ridiculous pictures (because that's what you do when it's snowing, obviously)

i really think i captured brad pitt's & cate blanchett's creepy stare. and i still will NEVER see this movie.

if i were america's next top model, this would be my greatest shot. i'm channeling a little bit of "i'm freezing because i'm lying down on an excessive amount of accumulated snow" and also "is it possible to look relaxed when you are lying on a picnic table in really cold weather? answer: no."

snowball fight on liverpool road.

jessica & i kept track of the last few seconds of the game via NFL's live game center updates, and were so completely annoyed with that final touchdown. it's like... ugh, so close? and yet so far.

thumbs down for the steelers kthx.

on friday, we went to cambridge. i met srivani, who was in the same boat as me (roommate on the 8AM trip, didn't really know anyone else). i was split up from the writing london crew, so we walked in the same tour group. it was good times. at some point, we met up with riley & jessica and grabbed lunch, then went to the fitzwilliam museum, which had some really cool picasso prints from the time of the spanish civil war. i almost bought a book of shakepearian cats in the bookstore, but didn't (for the record, "shakespearian cats" means that it was drawings of cats depicting famous scenes in shakespeare's works. it was adorable, but definitely not worth £7). i have pictures but they're boring, except for:

PUNTING on the CAM.

kings' college chapel is positively gorgeous...

... and they have heated floors! (which i felt bad about, testing out. it's a church & i shouldn't have had my shoes off but OH MY GOD IT WAS SO WARM I COULDN'T HANDLE IT)

that greyhound is kind of looking at you in a "whatchu talkin' 'bout, willis?" kind of way. and the dragon's just like RAWR, as dragons tend to do.

thanks to the incredible amounts of snow, class was cancelled for today. except that the e-mail cancelling class was sent out at 940AM, after people were supposed to have left for 10AM class - it's a 25 minute walk, and longer if you're trying to avoid busting your ass on the slushy sidewalk by walking slower than normal. we just decided to have class anyway, since we were all already there. this way, we don't have to do a make-up session. but they might close school tomorrow too (for which i'd be totally grateful because british politics is excessively boring).

too many pictures in the post. i must go read for the potential class i might maybe possibly have to go to, and then finish evelina, except that i've barely started. failure.

lots of walking, lots of cold weather, lots of strange food: the first week & a half.

so i've been in london for a week & a half now. i finished the first week of classes (it'll probably be official once i have the required issues in contemporary british politics & culture class tomorrow night). i think now it's starting to hit me that this isn't just a VACATION, which sucks. of course, i have tons of reading to do now. fail.

thursday, i had my modern drama in performance class, which'll be hard as a semi-english major not in the english-major section of this class. being an english education major apparently doesn't count (which is silly because if i have to teach theatrical works as part of the curriculum, i need to approach it from an expert view instead of an amateur). but the class looks great anyway! we'll get to see every good boy deserves favour by tom stoppard, which is going to be BRILLIANT considering the full orchestral accompaniment. and we're also going to see arthur miller's a view from the bridge.

friday, we went on a day trip to greenwich (home of the royal observatory & the prime meridian). i got to be in two places at once, kind of like in "a walk to remember." but it was SO COLD and there was SO MUCH WALKING. and i ate a cheeseburger with mayonnaise, which was really awkward.

i look positively ridiculous in this photo, i know. it's cold! and i am not photogenic obvs.

left foot in the western hemisphere, right foot in the eastern hemisphere.

here's the royal observatory. the ball dropped at 1PM exactly. it's how people told time here. the ceremony of the bal drop was significantly less exciting than, say, new year's. no suspense or anything. just... BAM! drop.

the foot tunnel you take from one side of the river to the other, to reach the light rail. too hilarious.

they have such strange food here. i mean, besides the bangers & mash, the toad in the hole, the steak & kidney pie & the cornish pasties. haha. but the worst, most offensive foods:

canned hot dogs? that is positively horrifying.

prawn cocktail pringles? really? that's disgusting.

riley, jessica & i went to the student union for some two-for-one drink night friday night and met some british and irish guys who gave us a little bit of a tour around the city while trying to find someplace else to hang out that was open past 130AM. that's the thing about london: most of it closes really early. but most of the weekend has been spent in the dorm room.

the rest of the weekend has been superlow-key. i saw the reader last night, and am watching revolutionary road right now. kate winslet is so incredible, it's insane. now, i have to do some more food shopping & reading for my east european gov&pol class. sometime this week, i'm making plans to visit kelsey in madrid over valentine's day weekend, and then we'll start planning for spring break. while i'm thoroughly excited about traveling around europe, i kind of want a roundtrip ticket to new york for the second week of break. too bad that's expensive and silly of me. but i miss america!!

still tired, still in london.

since my last post, i started classes! and went food shopping! and toured the city! and almost passed out from exhaustion (not in the medical sense, but in the completely exaggerative sense). three-hour classes are going to kill me. i can tell because today was the first day i've actually had a full-length class, as my politics professors THANKFULLY didn't believe in having a full-length class the first day, but my english professor was less forgiving. i am so done for the day. but i'm trying to stay awake so that i can get to be at a normal time.

so what happened in the course of almost five days since the last time i wrote a post? well...

saturday night: bar outing with the NYU kids. people were dancing (it was awk). they served finger foods (let me tell you: sausages? not good. canapes with tomato, mozzarella & eggplant? alright. spring rolls & spicy sauce? the best). seriously eclectic music choices by the DJ as well. i mean, lady gaga is wonderful, of course, but at some point, they played nickelback's "rockstars" and i tuned out. sat with my roommate jessica & our mutual friend riley. spoke to ross at some point, spoke to my other friend alex at some point, saw maggie (who i met hours before our flight at JFK) and waved hello.

got mcdonald's afterward. quarter-pounders abroad are horrible.

sunday: lazy day with the exception of the LONDON COACH TOUR, featuring the most adorable little tour guide ever. i swear she was obsessed with all things princess diana. it got a bit boring towards the end, thanks to all of the traffic on the way home. will have to post pictures in another post, as this one is getitng a bit too long.

monday: i rolled out of bed at 8AM for my 10AM class on east european government & politics. excellent, right? on the plus side, i managed to not nod off during class, so hopefully, that's a good sign that i'll really enjoy it. there are eight girls in the class, though. that's intense. after class, i came home and... you guessed it, NAPPED. jessica came back while i was sleeping and fell asleep herself. we're sleepy people. but we had to wake up, because it was imperative that we go FOOD SHOPPING. at tesco.

PS: frozen food is not meant to look fancy by any means. the brits, it seems, do not understand that fact. frozen entrees looked like legitimate food, with their silver labels and nice fonts. i bought too much and actually didn't really buy anything at all, now that i think about it. i've barely attempted to make a real dinner. i bought bread for 79 pence, strawberry jam, bagels, cream cheese,r egular cheese, ham... and a bunch of other stuff that i can't really eat for dinner. hm.

tuesday: INAUGURATION DAY! i didn't have class until 2, so i woke up around 10AM, checked MSNBC (i love my liberal gotcha media, dont'cha know), showerd, threw on my beautiful blue moveon.org OBAMA shirt and headed to british politics, a class of soewhere around 26 people. we had an introductory lecture, but because class is normally from 2-5PM and the inaugural address was meant to be broadcast here at 5, he let us out early.

i met up with jessica & we walked all the way to leicester square (and even a little further) until we got to the texas embassy cantina. major fail. it was packed. and not just with americans, but with londoners too, which bothered me because I VOTED FOR THIS MAN, HE IS MY PRESIDENT, AND I COULDN'T WATCH HIM TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE TO OFFICIALLY BECOME ME PRESIDENT. whatever. we hustled to find the nearest pub that was showing it, found some americans at the imperial pub just up the road, and watched the address. i cried, not gonna lie. there were americans in the pub who cheered too, some englishmen who looked at me funny because i was on the verge of tears, and a group of asians in the back talking very loudly. i was sincerely bothered. but we have a new president! so that's exciting. we toasted with some beer (only a half-pint, though, because a pint of beer is a LOT). will also post pictures, but there aren't many. i also have pictures of me with prawn-cocktail-flavored pringles. ew.

today (wednesday): didn't have class until 2 again. today was writing london. the profesor is absurdly lovely and really interested in what she studies (she primarily focuses upon literature in the 18th and 19th centuries, plus literature that's set in london). i do always have a bond with engish teachers, though. it's to be expected. but it was the first full-length class i've had! so exhausting. we read several poems or extracts of poems by wordsworth and guilpin, plus an excerpt from michel de certeau's book, the practice of everyday life. i sat near some really funny girls, including one from UVA, who i think is a sorority with someone i know from high school but not very well (i only "know" this thanks to some epic facebook-stalking. creepy? you betcha). and now i'm sitting here, contemplating whether or not i'll be making a semi-legitimate dinner this evening.

i miss new york. i went on a skyping spree last night with elanna, tiffany & marlee, then i called my dad, who i haven't spoken to in more than a week. it's ridiculous. i wish everyone back home had skype so that i could interact & see their bright, shining faces. if you have skype, SKYPE ME PLEASE & THANK YOU. i'm brianasantiago. obvs.

still adjusting.

adjustment #1: i woke up at 12PM local time today. my body's still confused about when it's time to sleep. i'm usually not tired until 3AM here. and even then, i sleep for nine hours!

adjustment #2: the shower. i don't know how to get it lower than scalding hot. at this point, i'm forced to stand in the corner of an already-very-small shower to make sure i don't burn myself. plus, i'm making a v. big mess because of the curtain. shame on me.

adjustment #3: eating pizza with a fork and knife is not in my dining experience. i know plenty of people who do it, but i grew up eating pizza folded and wonderful. yes, marlee did warn me. but it's not like i'm used to having to get used to cultural differences, considering how little i've traveled. all i wanted to do was pick up my self-cut slices of chicken & pepperoni pizza at pizza express. is that so much to ask? apparently.

adjustment #4: having to find alternative sources to stream my shows from home. having to watch "the office" on supernovatube.

adjustment #5: sleeping under a duvet with a cover instead of a comforter. i definitely woke up with half my body inside the cover like a sleeping bag.

adjustment #6: being away from home, yet trying to stay up late enough to talk to friends over yonder in america. maybe that's why my sleep schedule's so screwed up.

i bought books for classes yesterday.
- my modern drama in performance class doesn't have a complete list of the shows we'll be seeing yet, and i'm sure we have to read the text before watching, so i didn't buy any books for that class.
- too many books for writing london. some robert louis stevenson, zadie smith, charles dickens, virginia woolf... AND A BOOK ON HOW TO WRITE ESSAYS. yes. it's like i didn't take two semesters of expository writing program classes and was contemplating trying for "a spectrum of essays" next spring. i had nat bennett. for two semesters. and didn't complain (much). and did well! i think i know how to write an essay.
- east european gov't & politics has recommended-but-not-required texts so i picked up the more interesting-looking (and cheaper) of the two.
- british politics had two required books that are massive.

look at me, all excited about academia & whatnot. how adorable.

off for some food shopping @ tesco. i'll try not to sing lily allen's "LDN" on the way there. that would be v. embarrassing.

oh, speaking of lily, my "for british eyes only" playlist had every english musical artist i have in my iTunes library, auntie lil. the kooks, lily allen, the clash, amy winehouse, mark ronson, the beatles (obv.), kate nash, british sea power, radiohead, bloc party, and adele. the usual fare.

just touched down in london town (and i need a nap)

i'm finally here & settled into the new place. it's slightly hilarious-looking because they gave us all bed-sheets, and they MATCH. so now, my roommate jessica & i have matching beds. and it's great fun. we're guessing that everyone else has the exact same bedspreads and everything.

the plane was delayed for fifty extra minutes last night. and i ran into ross in the british airways waiting area. this is how i knew i was crazy early. his flight was at 830 or something. and mine was 1030 (delayed until 1120). preposterous. i legitimately sat at the airport, paid for wifi & sat on the internet for three hours. oh, and i called some of you to chat.

the plane ride itself was fantastic, except for the part where i barely slept because the guy sitting diagonally to my left SNORED. i'm in desperate need of upgrading my seat whenever i'm on british airways, because their plane set-up is insane. i watched my favorite episode of "flight of the conchords" - the one where bret has a bad body image - and listened to the iPod and watched kate winslet on oprah. they served white wine with dinner (chicken w/pasta, salad w/bleu cheese, balsamic vinaigrette, and cranberries, an awkward roll, and apple pie with ice cream). i thought i was going to fall asleep so easily after that. but i didn't. i slept for maybe an hour, and woke up an hour before we landed.

then, it took forever to get money exchanges and to get downstairs to the shuttle. and then we waited for the shuttle. and then the shuttle ride in itself was excessively long (and more coincidences: jessica, the roommate, is my friend riley's friend. and we sat in the same row on the shuttle. but didn't speak until, well, now).

and so now i'm settled in and ready to go. here are some pictures of the room:

notice that even abroad, i am a hot mess. we'll try to work on that later. take note of the gorgeous green bedspread. it reminds me a bit of IKEA.

the most incredible view! (i mean, if you look to the left or right of this hunk of nonsense, it's actually not half bad.)

my desk. i don't know why there's a microwave there when there are two in the communal kitchen. nor do i know why there's a water kettle. but i have Internet & that's all that really matters. oh, & mrs. fields cookies.

the exhaustion is killing me. i need a nap. laterrrr.

testing the waters & counting down.

it's 10:45PM in new york (3:45AM in london time on the 11th), and i've decided to succumb to technological advances & start my travel blog.

if i were marlee busching and needed to test anti-malaria medication for my trip to africa, i'd have started this several months ago. i, however, am only traveling to another metropolitan area where malaria isn't a threat. what a shame.

in three days, i'll be fifteen minutes into my seven-hour flight to london! a transatlantic flight! spent listening to my "for british eyes only" playlist! reading the suggested (required?) reading for the program... looking forward to it.