You're a Wizard Harry...

So much to do and so little time to blog! It has been a few days since my last post and what a few days it has been!! Yesterday we took a trip to the Harry Potter Warner Brothers Studio Tour! It was AMAZING to say the least, let's just say that I believe in magic.  The first thing you get to see is the great hall! You walk in through huge golden doors into this magnificent stone room.  It seems a little smaller than in the movie, but hey that's movie magic right?! The next room was even larger, it had Dumbledore's office, Professor Umbridge's office, Hagrid's Hut, the kitchen of the Burrow, The Gryffindor common room and bed room, and I could go on and on! It was amazing to see all this stuff up close and personal! After that you go outside to a small courtyard which contains the knight bus, Hagrids motorcycle, 4 Privet Drive, and the Potter House.  All of these were replica's because you could climb into them, go around them, and touch them.  The second lot had all the sketches, models, and dummy's used for the movies.  When I saw all the models, I though of my dad and how much he would have loved them!!! If only his students could create such wonderful pieces of architecture (not saying that his students are bad, they're just inexperienced!).  Also my two of my favorite parts of the tour were in this area, A complete replica of Hogwarts and Diagon Alley.  The replica was simply amazing.  The lights would change from daytime to nighttime in the room so you could see little lights twinkling out of the windows.  And what can I say about Diagon Alley... I mean come on, it's DIAGON ALLEY! It was awesome.  When I left I was a little sad to face the reality that Harry Potter and his world doesn't really exist, but that didn't stop any of us from watching the movies as soon as we got back!!  

A BIG DAY!

Today is a big, wonderful, fantastic, AMAZING day! Today is my Mom's Birthday!!!!!!!! Yahoo! Now of course I will not reveal her age, although I am pretty sure she is proud of it, but she and her twin sister get to celebrate this wonderful day together! I am sad that I am not at home celebrating it with her but she will be getting a little surprise in the mail tomorrow (yes I know, one day off, but what can you do).  I have the most amazing mom.  She will drop anything and everything if someone is in need, especially family. My mom has taught me to be strong and giving but to stand up for myself when someone is trying to take too much.  The list of things my mom has taught me is endless and grows everyday.  I am SO lucky to have superwoman as a mom :) I miss you mom and I love you forever and always, I hope you have an AWESOME birthday!!!!!

Churches for dayzzz!

My first Friday off got to a bit of late start, about 12pm, but I have a bit of a cold so I wanted to get as much sleep as possible. Heather, Emma, and I were ready by about 1:30pm and headed out.  Heather needed to drop off her internship time sheet at one campus and I needed to visit the study abroad office on another campus, so we split up for a bit to accomplish our errands.  This quick trip ended up taking about an hour.  Not that the trip took an hour, it was the fact that we could not seem to find each other again! When I was at oxford st station they were at Bond st station.  When I went to Bond st they went to oxford st, and so on.  So finally around 3 we finally made it to St. Paul's Cathedral. We made it to one church and then got a call from a few other APIers that wanted to come join us.  By around 4pm we were all together finally! Although we did not make it to all the churches on my list, we made it to about 4 and the the Bank of England Museum, where Heather and I were able to crack open the safe and get a gold bar! And by that I mean open a small plastic safe by answering questions and get a pin of a gold bar replica...not as cool when I say it that way but we are still very proud of our gold bars!

That night Kelly, Steph, Emily and I decided to go to a club in Camden called Koko.  There was a really cool band playing that night that looked like it would be fun to see.  On the way there we happened to meet a group of guys celebrating their friend's 21st Birthday.  They were also going to Koko and were so kind to show us the way! When we arrived I was amazed at the venue.  The club was an old theater that had been renovated. There were three floors, a stage, and a small deck upstairs.  When the opening band came on the girls and I snuck our way up to the front.  The opening band was really good, they played reggae music.  The main band, called Sons & Lovers, came on around 11pm.  Of course we were still in the front, and having done our homework and listened to their songs before leaving for the club, were singing right along with the band.  We plan to go back next Friday and see them for their last appearance at the Koko which happens to the the guitarist's birthday!

Mood: Finally settling in and getting comfortable

Witches, Ghosts, and Goblins, Oh My!

I have now made it through my first week of classes.  I have about 300 pages of reading to do by next week... That will be fun. But let's not worry about that yet, IT'S THE WEEKEND! Last night the entire API crew went on a Ghost tour of London.  We walked around for about an hour and half in the oldest part of London near St. Paul's Cathedral.  Our tour guide was AWESOME! He had the perfect storytelling voice and even sang a few times. Unfortunately we did not have any ghostly encounters ourselves.

Tomorrow Emma, Heather, and I are going to go back to the same area and explore.  While on the tour we saw some really cool churches and other old buildings we want to discover! Can you believe that some of the buildings have been there since before the US even existed?!

Let the Homework BEGIN!

So it is now Tuesday and classes have officially started.  I have been to two classes so far.  On Monday I had London during the Victorian Era from 3 to 6.  Then today I had the Psychology of Women.  I am really excited by both of these classes. In my history class my teacher told us that his nickname is House, after the TV show.  He said he wasn't exactly sure why students called him this other than the fact that he and Dr. House both use canes.  He assured us that he is not a mean person :p During our seminar, we took a field walk of the area around our classroom. We looked for evidence of the 19th century in the architecture.  It was super cool!  I love learning history but it is even better when you get to see the history!

In my class this morning the teacher was hilarious! Her name is Chantal and she is just fab-u-lous! The class is predominantly women, to be expected, but we do have two brave men. We talked all about feminism and the myths surrounding women, just an intro to the course.  I am really excited about this class, I think it is going to be so much fun!