Bambinatum Est Magitum

This Thursday, I added an all-new experience to my theatre-going repertoire: going to a musical whose soundtrack I didn't already have memorized frontwards and backwards. On a whim and a promise of £5 tickets, I went with some friends to see Matilda. Having never seen the movie (insert your comments about the inferiority of my childhood here), I had absolutely no idea what to expect from this show. To my delight, I loved every second of it - the incredible set , the fabulous, still-stuck-in-my-head-three-days-later music, and, of course, the fact that I only paid £5 to get in. Most importantly, though, this show provided me with an excellent topic with which to break my hiatus from near-daily blogging: British children.

If you've spent any significant time with me, you are doubtlessly aware of the fact that I do not like children. I cringe when I see children sharing airplanes with me; I intend to have a rule against children attending my wedding; I am not a fan. The pseudo-Latin motto of the school in Matilda is, as this post's title suggests, "Bambinatum Est Magitum" - children are maggots. While I don't actually advocate such a motto, I did stare longingly at the "children are maggots" coffee mugs they were selling at the merch stand for quite some time before remembering that I don't drink coffee and that I had less than a pound in cash on me at the time.

But in the past few days, I have been repeatedly brought face-to-face with the reality that British kids are basically the best thing ever. It all started with my night at Matilda. For those of you who are somehow completely uninformed about this Roald Dahl novel/cult classic 90s film/wildly successful West End musical, it revolves around a young British girl named Matilda and her days at a school filled, logically, with other young British children. [Note: Apparently they're not British in the movie. Whatever.] The cast of this musical, then, is filled to bursting with ridiculously talented British kids. I can't tell you any of their names, since programs were £3 and I obviously did not buy one, but these kids were incredible. All night, I watched these 7-year-olds, starring in a hit West End musical and being perfect, and thought to myself, "Yeah, that's cool I guess, but like, I played peripheral villain roles in three or four different musicals at my high school, so I think we know who the winner is here." For those of you requiring more evidence of how great these kids were, I would encourage you to try to find video recordings of "Miracle," "Revolting Children," and "When I Grow Up." After watching them, you can go and cry over the fact that these kids are a quarter of your age and still infinitely more talented than you. As we walked home from the theatre, we discovered that off-stage British children are perfect, too, as we somehow found ourselves quite literally in the middle of a huge group of schoolchildren being herded back onto their bus after a night at Mamma Mia. Finding us to be very tall and important-looking in comparison to their inexplicably-still-uniform-wearing selves, the kids were all "sorry"s and "'scuse me"s as they tried to get around us - and the teachers, finding us to be college kids and not creepy old men, probably grossly underestimated the likelihood that we would steal one of their students.

On Friday, the latest session of Inside London brought another dose of adorable (and rich) British children as it took us to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. After a largely child-free morning touring London's legal district, the afternoon session met in Chelsea at the National Army Museum. The museum was nice, but the highlight of the afternoon for all involved was seeing the swanky neighborhood in which the museum is located. As we walked through the blocks of mind-numbingly expensive townhouses surrounding the museum, we saw a lot of things you just don't see every day. Perhaps most notably, I saw a Maserati casually parked on the street. Have you ever actually seen a Maserati? I hadn't. I mean, Taylor Swift sings about them, so I knew they must exist. But I figured I'd never see one anywhere but on Cribs, right? Wrong. There is at least one just hangin' out in Chelsea. Also in Chelsea are approximately 90% of the cutest children in the whole of Britain. If there's one child-related thing that typically earns my love instead of my unabashed disdain, it's needlessly expensive baby clothes. And in this neighborhood, there has quite clearly been a lot of needless expense on baby clothes. One child that I saw was wearing a beret, sparkly kitten heels, and a knee-length peacoat that looked to cost more than my dress for senior prom. Suri Cruise would be proud of this child.

Yesterday, then, I completed my Tour d'Adorable British Children with a visit to the Tower of London.  Touring around the Tower was great in and of itself. We walked around the areas where crazy numbers of very important people were brutally murdered, we took dozens of wonderful tourist pictures, and moving-walkway'ed our way past the world's most priceless gemstones, spoons (?), and cathedral-shaped salt cellars (???) in the Crown Jewels display. It will probably be one of the few times in my life where I pay £17 to get into a place and actually feel like I got my money's worth. Beyond its historical and tourist value, though, the Tower also brought us yet more adorable British children. There was the hopelessly short one who pushed past me in her desperate attempt to gain any kind of visibility on our short-lived Yeoman Warder (Beefeater) tour. There were the multiple kids on our walk back whose mode of transportation was three-wheeled, tiny neon razor scooters with unicorns on the handlebars. And most importantly, there was this:

Has there ever been a thing cuter than that? I don't think there has. In the past few days, I have done some really cool stuff. I saw a great new musical, I explored the Tower of London, I saw a Maserati (have I mentioned that?). Above all these things, though, I was taught that British children are perfect. I dread the day when I return to Ireland, because if there's anything cuter than British kids, it's red-headed Irish kids. 

Oh, and, for good measure, here's a reminder of what I looked like as a child. 

This. I looked like this. 

Chocolate is My Whole Life, or Sarah Does Harrods and Oxford

The past couple of days here in Londontown have been pretty packed with interesting, exciting things. We had the first official session of our "Inside London" class yesterday, taking us to the (extremely cold) East End. To celebrate surviving class without temperature-induced necrosis of our hands and feet, a few of us headed over to Harrods after the East End tour for some window shopping and obnoxious intrusions into children's toy boutiques. And today, most of the program trekked out to Oxford for a day of sightseeing at one of Europe's oldest and most mind-numbingly difficult universities. All of these excursions were cool, I thought to myself while planning this blog post, but how can I bring them all together?

Well, dear readers, I found a way. And that way is chocolate.

This mantra is posted on the walls of the homes of every 40+, single, female multiple-cat owner in the United States, 

and also on my blog. So make of that what you will.

Now, I'll start by saying this connecting thread is a bit of a stretch in relation to the Inside London trips. I did, however buy myself a chocolate cookie at the slavery museum we visited in the morning to keep from passing out from cold- and slavery-pondering-induced fatigue! So we'll call that the connection.

The afternoon session of Inside London - a tour of London's East End to learn about the history of immigration in the area - was, while bitterly, freezing cold and distressingly chocolate-free, really pretty cool. We saw the neighborhood where Jack the Ripper used to hang out (read: kill people in terrible ways); some of London's most high-end and most rundown real estate sharing city blocks; and dozens of the narrow, cobblestone streets you associate with Dickensian London and dirty singing orphans. We also went into the bell foundry where they cast the Liberty Bell ('MURICA), the bell inside Big Ben, and all of the bells for last year's Olympics and Jubilee. A cool afternoon - literally; have I mentioned it was cold? I don't think I have - but, again, pretty free of chocolate.

Blessedly not chocolate-free was our next stop: Harrods. For those of you who don't know, Harrods is a magical department store where, in just over one literal million square feet of shopping space, astronomically expensive designer clothing and jewelry, toys of every imaginable kind, dozens of food shops, and every tourist in the city of London all coexist in perfect consumer harmony. As the only important SNL character of the past 10 years would say, this. Place. Has. Everything. In most of the store, buying even the cheapest of items would have far exceeded my budget for the day. [Note: That's not to say that everything in Harrods is incredibly pricey; that is simply to say that my budget yesterday was "SARAH DON'T SPEND MONEY UNLESS YOU'RE DYING."] The exception to this budget-exceeding rule, however, could be found in one glorious place: the Chocolate & Confectionery Room. One of the many rooms comprising the Harrods Food Halls, the Chocolate & Confectionery Room specializes in candies, chocolates, cupcakes, and all of those other foods off of which your dentist makes his money. Here, you can purchase even the most exotic of bite-sized chocolates for well under a pound. My friends and I spent a good third of our time at Harrods wandering around the Chocolate & Confectionery Room, but, left to my own devices, I would have left the room only to go buy a tent from the home goods section, bring it back to the Chocolate & Confectionery Room, and set it up somewhere in the middle of the room to live in indefinitely. After examining my hundreds of options, I eventually decided to spend my 70 pence on a chocolate called "black Spanish sea salt." It was incredible. I wore earrings today bigger than this chocolate, but this tiny food pretty much changed my life. I'll undoubtedly be making plenty of return visits to Harrods this semester, and I am wholly excited to think what new chocolate discoveries await me the next time. (I'm particularly excited for my return visit to Harrods while my parents are here, so I can buy more than one 70p chocolate at a time because I'm not paying for it. Thanks in advance, parentals.)

My life

Low-quality but necessary photo of Life-Changing Chocolate

Today, then, I headed out on the London Program day trip to Oxford. This, too, was full of both literally and figuratively cool things to do. The rector of our dorm, who - surprise - went to Oxford, gave us a walking tour around the city and university, giving us all sorts of insider trivia about life at Oxford. My personal favorite story was that of All Souls, Oxford's most elite, invitation-only graduate school. If you are one of the top two graduating students at Oxford in any given major, All Souls may invite you to apply to study with them. Upon invitation, your application consists of three three-hour exams, two written and one in the form of a dinner where the admissions people basically judge how good you are at simultaneously eating, mingling, and being an unparalleled super-genius.  To give us some context on just how difficult these exams are, our rector shared with us one of the exam prompts from the All Souls application for his year: "Water." That's it. Three hours. One prompt. "Water." And finally, to give us some context on what kind of incomprehensible genius freaks actually get in to this school, he informed us of the answer strategy one successful applicant had in recent memory. When asked to translate a practically incomprehensible passage of some Greek or Latin philosophical text, not only did this applicant translate it; oh, no. He translated it into Serbo-Croatian. 

I didn't even know Serbo-Croatian was a language. 

Even at the standard undergraduate level, though, this school is pretty unreal. The stories our rector told of the academic program at Oxford thoroughly convinced me that my schooling at ND - one of America's top universities, if we'll recall - is akin to that of a kindergarten classroom. When not busy being super-geniuses, the students of Oxford inhabit colleges where they live like the kings that many of them probably actually are. The university's most prestigious college, Christ Church, provided the site for the filming of several scenes in the Harry Potter franchise. The cathedral on-site at Christ Church - in other words, the (very) rough equivalent to the Christ Church dorm chapel - looks like this: 

So, I mean...whatever. In exploring the area surrounding the main campus of Oxford today, one could hardly help but run into the little shop that brought me to this blog title: a fudgery. This fudgery is run by three enthusiastic, awesome hipsters. It is full of deliciousness and joy. And it has the most brilliant business strategy of all the fudgeries in the world. At this little fudgery, you see, they believe whole-heartedly in free samples. Really wholeheartedly. For most of the day, one of the owners stands outside the shop holding a sign that says "Free Samples" and yelling at people to come in and eat free chocolate. When she's not outside, the sign stands prominently on its own outside the door. After walking past the shop a couple of times throughout the day (obviously we were in a hurry on those occasions), my friends and I eventually stopped in, because free chocolate. We took samples of the sea-salt caramel fudge the hipster owner was dishing out, agreed it was quite lovely, and prepared to leave. But, then, the hipster owner says, "Want another?" 

Um.....is Oxford All Souls graduate school hard to get into?

At this fudgery, you see, you can literally take as many free samples as you want. Free samples of any flavor you want. Free samples of practically any size you want. Free samples of everything. Obviously, you would have to be completely crazy to turn these hipsters down. As much free fudge as you can get your hands on? Come on! After the sea-salt caramel, then, I tried a sample of the sea-salt dark chocolate, finding it, too, to be delicious. As the tight-vested, long-haired hipster making a new slab of maple syrup and walnut fudge on the marble counter in the corner handed me a huge, free glob of fudge quite literally right off the chopping block, I found myself thinking, "Silly cool fudge hipsters. You are giving me so much free food right now, but I'm totally going to walk out of here empty-handed in, like, three seconds. I have defeated you, silly cool fudge hipsters." But then I had free sample #4, and suddenly, the silly cool fudge hipsters were giving me pricing info. And suddenly, standing in the cool hipster fudgery, I found myself thinking, "Four pounds fifty is SO reasonable for a slab of Double Trouble Chocolate fudge that I will take out of here and inhale in under thirty seconds!" Before I knew it, I was leaving Oxford with not just the rugby shirt I'd been planning on buying but with a slab of fudge the size of my face. Silly cool fudge hipsters, you are geniuses. Somewhere in the middle of my first slice of this fudge earlier this evening, I decided: if my kindergarten-level top 20 university degree can't get me any other jobs, I am entirely on board with opening a college-town hipster fudgery. I could wear an ear cuff. I could give away free chocolate (read: I could eat a lot of free chocolate myself). As I said each time we passed the fudgery today, I could be about that life. Oh, yes. Oh, yes I could. 

So that has been the past couple of days in my glamorous study abroad life: chocolate. Tomorrow, as I am out of almost every single foodstuff I've ever purchased, I am going to finally go grocery shopping again. Luckily, I've finally found some recipes to get me through the semester, thanks to this magical list. Am I kidding when I say that list will provide most of my sustenance for the next four months? Maybe because I doubt Funfetti exists in Britain...but maybe not. Until next time, kiddos. Keep on chocolatin' on.   

  

Adventures in Sophistication

Note: This was written last night, Jan 16. See "Addendum" for more.

Tonight, my friends, was a big night in the progression of my study abroad experience. After days of eating peanut butter, random fruits, and cheap cold cuts at every meal, tonight, I made my very first hot meal of the semester. All of you stupid makeshift chefs studying in Rome are probably laughing reading this - yes, I've seen the pictures of your gourmet nonsense and yes, I hate you - but so far, I have far from mastered the concept of a nice, warm dinner. Deli meats and my trusty frozen loaf of bread have been my steadfast companions in my elementary attempts at culinary self-sufficiency; the warmest food I've made for myself before this evening was toast. Tonight, though, I ventured into all-new cooking territory: the microwave. I mastered our microwave's largely incomprehensible system of Auto modes and compulsory weight measures (which, yes, were in grams) and created, in a mere 90 seconds, the most perfect bowl of Uncle Ben's Express Rice you ever did see.

Yes, readers, my idea of a high-complexity, high-class hot meal in the UK is minute rice named for a fictional freeman of the turn-of-the-century United States South.

As the semester goes on, I intend to make more complicated forays into the world of Cooking for One, but after a week of making myself nothing but sandwiches and Nutella wraps, this minute rice was a pretty big deal. I even spiced it up a little from the pre-made original by adding some cheese to my artificially chicken-flavored yet "Suitable for Vegetarians!" rice. CRAZY; I know. I put my bowl on a larger plate with two selections from my random fruit collection and poured the last of my "Innocent" brand apple juice (which I'm pretty sure is marketed largely for five-year-olds), and let me tell you, I was feelin' like one classy lady. For dessert, I followed my hot meal with more hot food, in the form of Nutella on somewhat-burnt toast. In the words of the insufferable Rachael Ray, "Yum-O AND delish!"

Meanwhile, when not concocting my latest gourmet meal, I have been preoccupied with the London Program students' other attempts at sophistication: sophistication through fashion. In the pre-departure meetings we had throughout fall semester, our program leaders frequently reminded us that the standard for dress in a chic European city like London is higher than it is on campus at ND. From what I've observed of most Londoners, this warning has rung fairly true. On the whole, people here are typically well dressed. The sweatpants and T-shirts that are acceptable on campus would, as our program directors warned us, be laughably inappropriate to wear out in public around Central London. None of this is false. Their advice was not bad.

The gentlemen of our program, however, have taken these tips on snappy dressing a bit too far. Any of you boys reading this, don't be offended or anything, but, like...seriously pay attention. When our program directors say that Londoners dress up more on a daily basis than we typically do, they're right. In the UK, I have finally found a society where it's not weird that I'm practically allergic to wearing sweatpants outside of my home. But what they primarily mean by "dress up" is "dress better." The people of London do not have a higher standard of dress because they wear formalwear to class every day. They simply wear more fashionable casual clothes. And boys of the London Program, you have not exactly mastered this distinction. Don't get me wrong, gentlemen; you look nice. Really!  Khakis and sweaters, though, are not what they meant when they told you to dress up. You all look great for church, or for a day of work at your job as a middle school English teacher. Ready to blend in for a day of class as a student in Europe, however, you are not. It's really very admirable that you're trying so hard, but take a look around you on your next walk to class. Do some shopping anywhere in London. Match your European competition, not your own standards of "dressing up."

Oh, and props to the few guys who have decided adamantly to ignore all suggestions on dress and continue to wear BrO'Neill hoodies and Nikes every day. You are some bold gentlemen. Have fun having all your stuff stolen by pickpockets who've found their easy American targets.

---

ADDENDUM: Last night, when writing this post, I abandoned it mid-paragraph when I first started to hear of the Manti news. Shortly thereafter, in what I first thought was an extreme physio-emotional (made that word up, go with it) reaction to the news, I began to feel very ill. I eventually was forced into the realization that my fancy-schmancy hot rice dinner had given me food poisoning. I am not even kidding. The odds of me getting food poisoning the first time I make myself hot food are about the same as the odds of me getting a face-to-face meeting with the Queen tomorrow afternoon, so naturally, it happened. I blame Lennay "I'm Not Real" Kekua for this. Back to deli meats and peanut butter I go. Let's all forget yesterday happened.

Getting to Know You

Today, the students of the Notre Dame London Program were brought back to the reality that our time here is, after all, for study abroad. After our opening weekend of lounging, pubbing, and jet-lagging our way around London, this morning, we had to actually go to class. While this was a rude awakening for some/all of us - people who went out on a Sunday last night, I'm looking at you - it was really a great step in our journey out of tourist mode.

For me, the biggest perk of the first day of class was the accompanying advent of Sarah Doin' Stuff By Herself in the Big Cit-ay. Most of my time in London so far has consisted of following along blindly and cluelessly through the city in (conspicuously, non-native-ly) large groups, snapping the occasional picture and remembering exactly nothing about how to get from point A to point B. While this break from my usual routine of doing everything by my slow-walking self has been great for my calves, it's been completely worthless in my attempts to familiarize myself with anything. Today, then, I decided it was time to venture out on my own**. A good 45 minutes before my first class started (I have, after all, gotten lost in Logansport, Indiana, on multiple occasions), I set out on the trek from our dorm building, which is here:

 ,

to our classroom building, which is here: 

 . 

And I made it there without dying, having my belongings forcibly stolen from me, or even having to turn around because I'd gone the wrong way!...at least not more than like, three times. So, yay me! Doin' stuff by myself in the big cit-ay! I even came back a different way and still didn't die. 

This is how I represent excitement, because my life is a never-ending stream of pop culture references

Upon arriving successfully at the ND classroom building (which, by the way, is across the street from the Canadian Embassy and which, if rumor is to believed, we bought after out-bidding on it against the French government, casually), it was time for class. In my first class of the day, Philosophy of Religion, I was perplexed to discover that the only philo class I will ever take in England is taught by a cargo-shorts-wearing, Wilford-Brimley-mustache-having American, whereas the only philo class I have ever taken and will ever take in the United States was taught by a bow-tie-wearing, Queen's-English-accent-brandishing Englishman. Philosophize that, people. Shortly after this class, in the middle of a lecture on the London-y-est thing possible, Sherlock Holmes, the fire alarm went off. This would normally be little more than a funny little anecdote for the first day of school, but we, the students of the London Program, have already spent a good three hours of our lives since arriving here just learning about fire safety. I mean, honestly, the frequency and depth of these fire safety meetings reached the point of comedy about two burn-time-demo videos ago. And yet today, as if to spite us for laughing at the meetings, off goes the fire alarm. I sincerely hope this does not become an everyday thing, primarily because (as I learned the hard way today walking home) it rains a lot in London. 

Not what I looked like 

More like what I looked like

Overall, though, I must say today was a pretty good first day of class. I'm finally starting to get to know London, and the frequency with which I narrowly avoid being hit by buses is decreasing with each passing hour. Keep coming back to check out the new blog - I still hope to soon have something more exciting to write about than peanut butter and fire drills!

**: And oh yeah. "How many songs from musicals with the words 'On My Own' in their titles does this girl know?", you may ask yourself. Is it two, the number of songs from musicals with the words "On My Own" in their titles that I've already linked my blog to? Maybe. Is it secretly many more than that, and you'll just have to wait and see to find out? Also maybe. (Hint: it's 2.) Stay tuned. 

Groceries and Jetlag: The Thrilling First Days

Well, folks, I am now officially a (short-term, multiple-entry-approved) London resident. Forty-three hours after the end of the National Championship, I hopped on a plane and headed over. Sometime shortly thereafter, I blinked and re-opened my eyes to discover I'd somehow been living here for three days. The program staff has kept us busy with largely dull orientation activities, somewhat more interesting museum visits, and free time to cope with the reality of how poor we will all be by the end of this semester. I would detail all of these things, but again...

via.

So, no boring lists of activities for you, dear reader! Nay; instead, I'm going to take this first post to talk about the only two things my brain can comprehend at the moment, at 6:30 PM after a near-three hour nap: groceries and jetlag. 

Today (yes, only today; yes, I know we've been here since Thursday morning), my flatmates and I finally went on our first grocery run. Given my fondness for food, I figured it would be hard for me too mess up this task too severely. Wrong. After this morning's trip to the Museum of London, the five of us took the tube over to one of the area's biggest (read: cheapest) grocery stores, located in Piccadilly Circus. My philosophy here was basically...

Now, I wasn't stupid about it. I checked and re-checked the expiration dates on everything I picked up to ensure I wasn't buying more of anything than I could eat before it went bad. (Cue your "way to go Sarah, you're so smart!"s, friends.) Beyond that, though, my only grocery criteria were 1) does it look tasty?, 2) is it Aldi-level cheap?, and 3) can I prepare it without burning down my building? Pretty much any item that earned a "yes" to all three of those questions went into my cart. With these criteria and the number of items I bought according to them, I'm set on eating for a good week or two. These un-picky criteria, however, left me driving the struggle bus when it came to dragging everything home. I ended up with four extremely full grocery bags, and, as I mentioned, this store was in Piccadilly Circus. Our flats are in a great location, close to lots of things. But you know what they're not close to? Piccadilly Circus. After shopping, I carried my four giant bags through the UK's answer to Times Square, down to the tube station, on a several-stop tube ride, back up to the street, and across several lanes of traffic to our building. By the time we arrived, each bag strap had been stretched tight to a width of about a millimeter, and I could barely feel my wrists - but not a single bag broke, suckas. 

Regarding the taste of my purchases, I've decided a couple of important things. First of all, anyone who said that peanut butter is expensive or weird-tasting in the UK is a filthy liar. My jar of Tesco-brand peanut butter cost me a whopping one pound and forty-one pence, and it tastes LIKE PERFECTION. Have I been eating it straight from the jar? I mean, maybe. Have I been doing the same thing with my new, strongly-reminiscent-of-a-candle Nutella jar? Maybe. So fear not, Americans in London, peanut butter is not a problem. The only noticeable difference so far is that the jar is glass. That's a little weird. Here's hoping I manage to remember that when I inevitably almost drop the jar while making breakfast. My other main observation so far is that I'm going to be eating a lot of apples this semester. 

And then there's the other thing on my mind in the early days of study abroad: jetlag. I am usually one of those lucky people who is largely undeterred by the substantial time change of international travel. It doesn't take me too long to readjust to my new time zone, and I usually even come pretty close to sleeping clear through the first night. This has continued to hold true for this trip. I had no real trouble figuring out what time it was or thinking it was hours earlier than it was. And on the first night, I slept the whole night with no issues, waking up only when my alarm went off and I dragged myself out of bed to reset it for two hours later. Three days in, though, I am still verging on too tired to function at all times. That obnoxious alarm on the first morning? It only went off after I'd been asleep for 11 hours. I slept for 13 hours on the first night and a good 7 or 8 on the second. I have had a pretty nice sleep schedule so far. Yet, when we returned from our grocery adventure this afternoon, the only thing I could do after unpacking everything and eating a quick, weird lunch was take a nap. I slept for 2 1/2 hours. I'm not proud of it...whatever.

In the next few days, I hope to become a bit more interesting than the Nutella-eating sleep monster I am right now. Until then, I'll keep basking in the Vision-filled glory of my desk decor (one of the few categories where I was really on top of things) and the London-y glory of the views outside my door. 

Welcome

Hello, dear readers, and welcome to what I am egotistically calling Domerberry International. For those of you who don't know, I am spending this semester studying abroad with Notre Dame's London Undergraduate Program. It's going to be an amazing four months, and I felt I needed a specific study abroad blog to supplement my standard blog, The Domerberry. To accommodate this need, I created A Domerberry in King Arthur's Court. This title, for the unsophisticated among you, is inspired by Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, a book about an American in England that (as is often the case with literary and cultural references I make in my blog post titles) I have not read but that seemed appropriate. Check back here throughout the semester for posts about my life in the UK and about my international travels. I hope to keep it funny and not painfully boring, as is so often the theme of study abroad blogging. Because hey - I'm not like a regular study abroad blog, I'm a cool study abroad blog. Right, Regina?