Costume Ball...Masquerade the Night Away!

Hello Everyone!

Seems like I'm blogging quite a bit lately- so much to do in so little time!  By the time you see this, I'll be home in 17 days!!! SO exciting!  A lot left to do before I leave, including my final examinations which I'm not looking forward to.  Anyways, enough about the boring stuff!  Here is what happened at Harlaxton College on Saturday night!
We all got dressed up in costumes and masques for a great evening- the Costume Ball!  Everyone that comes to Harlaxton looks forward to this event, and now I know why!  Our evening started with polite drinks in the Great Hall before dinner.  We were able to take pictures with each other and visit- it was definitely nice!

We then moved into the Long Gallery for dinner, which was chicken, potatoes, carrots, green beans, and orange salad.  For dessert we were served truffle chocolate cake (SO good!).  While we ate our dinner, we were treated to a dinner performance from Harlaxton students who were performing a murder mystery.  It was really really good!  The entire production was Harlaxton students, even the playwright!  I was truly impressed by the talent that we have here- completely amazing.  

After dinner, we went into the Great Hall for dancing.  Best. Night. Ever.  I'm serious- We all had such a good time, students and faculty alike, dancing and singing to some great tunes.  I have never had such fun over here until then.  It's nights like these that make you want to stay forever <3

Costume Ball Highlights from my friend Gloria :)

I hope you enjoyed the pictures- more blogs to come this week!  
<3 Taylor

London Field Trip

Cheers everyone!

I hope you are all having a great weekend preparing for Thanksgiving this week!  Unfortunately, the Brits don't celebrate this holiday (although I'm not quite sure why...), so I will be traveling to Rome!  However, more on this trip later.  I must tell you about the wonderful field trip that we took to London on Friday for British Studies!
We left at 8am (quite early for us here!) via coaches to go to London for the day.  We arrived at 11am at Trafalgar Square, which is home to many museums in London.  We were instructed to go on our own to the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery to view specific paintings and artwork for our British Studies exam that is coming up in two weeks (the DAY before I come home!!!!).  I was able to see many different types of paintings (no pictures allowed I'm afraid) from centuries ago.  It was really cool to be able to piece things together.  After we had our personal time in these museums, we got to walk 30 minutes to St. Paul's Cathedral!

St. Paul's is beautiful, inside and out.  I learned a lot about the history of this building.  You would be surprised that this was built to model Anglican religion way back then.  Even more so, it is more of a military monument than a church; you have to literally look for any aspects of religion inside.  However, the building was beautiful, and we had a guided tour with our British Studies professor.  I was able to see Horatio Nelson's tomb, who won the Battle of Trafalgar for the Brits against the French with the Royal Navy.  Funny story about him- he took a coffin every battle he went to in case he died.  Unfortunately he came home in a coffin after this battle.  Another monument inside this cathedral is the Duke of Wellington, who fought during the World Wars.  I saw a plaque to commemorate Florence Nightingale, the mother of nursing as well.  I enjoyed St. Paul's Cathedral a lot.

Bailey (one of my roommates) and I went to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum after the British Studies day was over.  This museum was AWESOME.  The people looked like people!  I got pictures with some of the best Hollywood stars, and it was so cool.  The museum was much more than a museum.  Inside was an amusement ride, 4D movie, and a haunted house.  Pretty awesome if you ask me!

When we left here, we strolled over near Regent's Park to Oxford Street, which was FULL of Christmas lights and shopping.  We had a blast taking pictures of all the different signs that lit up the street, as well as shopping in some great stores.  This included Top Shop, Forever 21, Primarx, H & M, and so many more!  We finished our night by walking in Picadilly Circus, which was full of people, lights, and noise (the usual).  All in all, just another day in London :)

Have a great night!
Taylor <3

Puis-je avoir un verre de vin??

Bonjour!  

Time flies at the Manor- three weeks from tomorrow until I get home!  I'm very excited, though it is bittersweet.  I hope everything state-side is going well.  Short story for you all to make you laugh :) Today we were in British Studies talking about World War II.  The presenter said that the Americans that came over to help with the war were, "Over-paid, over-sexed, and over here".  But the Americans retaliated the British with their own phrase: "Under-paid, under-sexed, and under-Eisenhower".  We had to laugh, because the scowl on his face was priceless!  Back to the blog- I'm posting another story from another day in Paris.  I don't want to bore you too much about this city, but I loved it so much and my last day there was wonderful and too good not to share!

On Friday, Erin and I hung out and went people watching all day.  Yes, we did get a little lost, but it made our adventure that much more wonderful.  On Saturday, I went with Erin, Kate, and Matt, and our first stop was the Cimetière du Père Lachaise, or the Pere Lachaise Cemetery.  This place was like it's own city- miles of graves and tombs that were made to remember loved ones.  We didn't just want to go to a random cemetery in Paris- Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde were buried here, so we went to find them.  It was very interesting to see the history inside of the cemetery- there were so many graves from so many different dates.  It was honestly unbelievable.  The people that commemorated the deceased left flowers and plaques on the grave sites.  It was very cool.  

After we left the cemetery, we jumped over on the metro to go to the Eiffel Tower again to see it by day light.  It was just as beautiful, even though the skies were a cloudy gray.  It seemed like it was going to rain all day, but that didn't stop us!  We had a great time walking around the tower, and then we left to go to the Modern Art Museum.  We didn't get to see much, but it was definitely a unique place.

Outside of the museum, there was a large street market.  It reminded me of the flea markets in Florida.  People were cooking food, vendors were selling bags, shoes, coats- you name it!  There was even fresh produce.  We ended up eating in the street market.  I had a crepe with "pizza meat and cheese", and honestly it was delicious!  We all had something different, which was fun.  It also allowed me to see more of the Parisian culture that is so unique to our own.  Once we finished our meals, we were on our way up the hill to Champs de Elysees, which is equivalent to the Chicago Magnificent Mile.

It was about a mile hike up the hill, but it honestly wasn't too bad.  Once we got up it, we were greeted with the Arc de Triomph, which is a monument to commemorate the commanders of the French army, as well as their version of the grave of the unnamed soldier.  We were able to walk around out there, but it was quite windy since rain was coming in.  We then made our way down the street looking at all the different stores- Tiffanys, Coach, H&M- you name it, they pretty much got it.  We stopped for coffee at a Starbucks while we were there to warm up.  We had more to see that day!

We caught the metro to go over to Montemarte, which is the Bohemian district in Paris.  This is where the iconic Moulin Rouge is located, which is one of my favorite movies!  We got there and it was pouring down rain.  We also had to walk uphill (a very STEEP hill) to get to la Basilique du Sacre-Coeur, which is one of the highest points in Paris.  It was really pretty once we did get up there though!  No pictures were allowed in the church, but it was absolutely gorgeous.  It was nice to see how many people took the journey up there to pray.  When we left the church, it had stopped raining.  We then walked back down the hill to go do a little souvenir shopping.  On our way back to the hotel, we stopped to take a few pictures of Moulin Rouge, which was so so so so cool because it was all lit up (pictures of that to come soon!).  People can still go and watch shows to this date, but we opted to go back to the hotel to have a glass of wine (glass=bottle).  We had a lot of fun together watching BBC (it was the only English channel) and talking with one another.  It was one of my favorite nights this semester thus far :)

That's all I have for now.  I'm feeling a bit under the weather today, so keep me in your prayers- we have a school trip to London on Friday and I have a concert with my meet-a-family on Saturday afternoon, so I need to be feeling better!
Love always,
Taylor <3

Je ne parles pas Francais!

Bonjour!  I am back and alive from Paris and full of more excitement and life :)  I hope you are all doing well over there across the pond- I was able to watch BBC World News quite a bit this weekend (details to come) and I saw that there is a lot going on with your side of the world.  I get home in 24 days, so hold down the fort until then!  But on to the blog, Allez Paris!
We left after our British Studies class for Paris at 12:30pm on Wednesday 07 November.  We took a coach to the Grantham train station, which we took to London King's Cross.  On my way there, I worked on homework (yeah I know, still studying).  Once arriving at King's Cross, we walked across the street to London St. Pancras Station, which has the Eurostar there.  The Eurostar is the train we took that goes through the tunnel under the water to Paris.  It was a pretty cool experience...but I took medicine to help me with motion sickness so I didn't get to see a lot of the trip.  When we arrived at Gare du Nor, or the North Train Station in Paris, I was pretty groggy.  I followed the crowd to go to the underground, or the Metropolitan as the Parisians call it, to get to our hotel.  We took the Metro to Strasbourg-St. Denis station, which was only one block away from our hotel.  Stepping out of the underground and looking around here allowed me to finally- FINALLY- see Paris!  I was so excited!!  
We got to our hotel at 7:45pm Paris time, so my roommate (Erin) and I went to dinner with some friends.  We wandered the streets looking for something to tide us over until breakfast when we found a small place that offered a variety of foods, including crepes.  The crepe that I got was poulet and fromage, which is chicken and cheese in french.  I had never had a crepe, and honestly, it was pretty good! I really enjoyed the night out with these people.

The next day, Erin, Kate, and I went around Paris.  Thankfully, Kate had been to Paris twice before and spoke fluent French, so we were in great hands.  We started our day at the Louvre, which is a huge huge HUGE museum of art and sculptures.  I found it absolutely gorgeous and overwhelming.  Before we went inside, I was able to catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. It was incredible!  It looked so delicate (and really far away) from where we were.  We went into the Louvre and walked around for hours, seeing the wonderful works of Davinci and the home of Napoleon before the French revolution.  The entire building was huge- it was full of floors and wings and sections and division of art.  I don't think I will ever see anything like it again.  

When we left the Louvre, we went to lunch on our way to Notre Dame.  We ate at a small restaurant and shared pizza.  Our walk to Notre Dame was absolutely gorgeous.  We were able to experience the culture of Paris as well as save some money.  Inside Notre Dame is absolutely beautiful.  I can't believe how pretty it was.  I was amazed by the details of this cathedral.  Sometimes I feel like the cathedrals are the best parts of my trips.  Even though a lot of them look the same, they are all beautiful in their own way.  The details and the majesty of each one is just awesome.  I really enjoyed the opportunity that I got here to relax and reflect.

Outside of the Notre Dame is one of the bridges in France that is most decorated by locks.  These locks, with whatever message is scripted on the outside, resemble the love of the people who locked it on the bridge.  People "lock their love" in Paris and throw the key into the river.  There is still hope for the hopeless romantics in the world!!  My friends and I spent a fair amount of time here studying the different types of locks and the different ways people wrote on them.  It was pretty cool to look at.  After this, we walked from the Notre Dame to the Eiffel Tower, which took a LONG time.  Halfway because it was really far away, and halfway because we got lost.  Either way, it was a great time walking and seeing more of the Parisian culture.  By the time we made it to the Eiffel Tower, it was dark outside.

The Eiffel Tower lit up at night has to be my favorite thing to see.  It was absolutely gorgeous.  Every hour, there is a light show, complete with twinkling lights on the tower.  Erin, Kate, and I all bought some cheese (not so great) and some cheap wine (pretty great).  We sat on a park bench for three hours that night just enjoying each others' company and watching the tour light up at various times of the night.  We got back to our hotel and spent the night talking with each other.  Best night in Europe, thus far <3

Au Revior! Allez Paris!

Bonjour!  Allez Paris auhord'hui :) I am so excited!!!!  I hope you are all having a wonderful Wednesday...a quick shout out to my mom and dad who are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary today in the Florida Keys- I hope you kids have fun!  I'm so thankful for everything they do for me and my family <3

I'm leaving for Paris in approximately an hour! I'm SO excited to go to this beautiful city.  A quick quote to start the blog off...

"We entered Paris and the Seine came into view.  Silvery and serpentine, it moved like mercury through the center of the city, a mesmerizing force." -Alice Steinbach

Hopefully I don't get lost!  The map has SO much detail!!

Here is what I know about this trip...I honestly don't have much planned, so it will all be up in the air when I'm there.  I'm travelling with my roommate and the school as well, so I won't be alone (no worries!).  I ask you all to pray for a safe trip- I'm going to be gone for 5 days!  It will be nice to get back into Europe (since I miss Switzerland already!).

• Wednesday 07 November
• Coach departs for Grantham train station, goes to London Kings Cross.  We check-in for the Eurostar (the chunnel to Europe!) and we arrive in Paris this evening at 7:30pm  We are staying at the Hotel du Pat d'Etain (I have no idea what that means either)
• We have free days on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. (08-10 November)
• Sunday 11 November
• Depart the hotel for the metro, check in for Eurostar, and get back to London St. Pancras.  We leave London for Grantham and a coach brings us back to the Manor upon arrival at approximately 4:45.  

I am planning on taking a day trip to Versailles one day, which will be pretty cool.  I also plan on walking around the city, going up in the Eiffel Tower, seeing Notre Dame, going to the Louvre, and shopping!  Hopefully the trip goes well...normally I plan things out ahead of time, but I really just want to be spontaneous as possible here.  Well...that's all I really know for now!  Next time we talk will be on Sunday (hopefully if I can get my work done!).  

Au Revior! Allez Paris!  Vive la Paris!

Taylor <3

Cadbury World and Birmingham!

Hallo!!!

I hope you are all having a great week- remember tomorrow is Wednesday and then T.G.I.F.!!! It's a great day at the Manor, although the weather is a little crummy.  We had a ceremony in the Pegasus courtyard this morning to celebrate and remember the fallen soldiers from the World Wars.  It was very interesting, and I wore a poppy in honor of the soldiers.  The Senior Nurses have our final part of our community project tonight, the Health Olympics, which will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of our Health Fair (yes, my academic side is coming out!).  However, the point of this blog is FUN and I want to tell you all about Cadbury World, the Willy Wonka Factory of England...and the greatest shopping mall EVER!

On Saturday morning, the students boarded the bus to go up north to Cadbury.  There was a mix of students and faculty for this trip, which was quite nice.  I hadn't been on a small day trip with the school before, but this was a lot of fun!  I was able to hang out with different people this day, which made the trip a cool bonding experience with the rest of the students.  We arrived at Cadbury World in the late morning, and everyone was greeted with the overwhelming smell of chocolate.  Honestly, I don't think I can look at chocolate for a long time after this trip.  When we got in the door, there were so. many. children.  I'm not kidding, it was worse than Chuckie Cheese with 12 kids' birthday parties going on.  However, our group was shuttled through the lobby/entrance quite quickly.  We started off by going through the Amazonian Jungle.  When we did get ready to walk through the door, we were given two chocolate bars, which was a Curly Whirly and a I HAVE NO IDEA (Okay, I forgot the name of it.  Sorry!) .  The Curly Whirly was like a flattened milk dud (SO chewy!) and the other was a honeycomb covered in chocolate.  We had a blast walking through the factory and smelling the chocolate.

After we exited the interactive area of the factory, we were able to see the packaging and manufacturing of the chocolate, which was really overwhelming because of the smell.  Honestly.  I thought I gained about 30lbs just from the smell.  But it was so. good.  We got another free chocolate bar and continued to walk through the factory.  We rode the "Cadabra" ride, which was like a Small World ride from Disney world.  It was full of singing and dancing cocoa beans.  You get the picture.  When you leave the ride, you walk into a fun and interactive chocolate molding area.  You get to see live demonstrations and talk to the chocolateers, which is really cool.  I got to write my name in Cadbury chocolate.  And I got a glass full of melted chocolate.  Again.  Too much chocolate!!  After this, you exited into the largest Cadbury chocolate shop in the entire world.  The candy was so fresh. And so good. And I must say, it was pretty awesome.  Outside, they had a play area for little kids and a place for people to create their own chocolate concoction.  I chose chocolate and marshmallows.  I regret to inform you that I had to throw the last few bites away.  I think I died in chocolate coma.

When we left Cadbury, we went into Birmingham, which was really close to Cadbury.  We went to the Bull Pit, which is the largest shopping area I think I have ever seen in my entire life.  Three stories and a HUGE building full of stuff.  What stuff?  Basically anything (I mean EVERYTHING) you can imagine.  It was fun to be in a mall again, but I will say the crowds were SO thick.  I'm talking at least thousands of people in this mall.  They had a line to get on the escalator to get on the next floor.  It was absolutely ridiculous...but still, I missed just going to the mall.   I ended my day back at the Manor, safe and sound.

That's all I have for now until I get to the Paris Trip briefing!  Talk to you all soon :)
Love always,
Taylor <3

Belton House and My Meet-a-Family

Hello everyone!

It has been quite an exciting past few weeks here in jolly ol' England!  I am very sorry that I haven't been blogging every day (or every week!) for a while...school is important and honestly there is very little time left in my day!  However, I'm pleased to report that I'm doing quite well with school and my classes are going very well.  As you can see from my past few blogs, I have been experiencing some beauties around Europe! And in just two days, I leave for the most romantic city in the world, Paris!  I'm really excited to go to Paris- my bucket list has it on there to get some cheese and bread and wine and sit under the Eiffel Tower and just watch people.  However, I'll post more about my plans for this tomorrow after the trip briefing...right now is time for my last experience with my Meet-a-Family!!!
Last Friday, my family, Ann and Andrew, picked me up and took me to their house for lunch.  On our last encounter, we ate dinner and played Sequence together, which was really fun.  On this outing, we were going to a house nearby called Belton House.  It's a house that was from the reign of Edward VIII, so it's pretty old but modern at the same time.  Anyways, I was surprised to eating lasagna for lunch, which is the food I told Ann that I had missed the most during our last visit.  It was so nice of her to do that!   They also asked about my trip to Switzerland, and they could not believe that I ran off the mountain.  We also talked about my family, and they are anxious to come to Harlaxton for an afternoon so they can see pictures of my family (which I never stop talking about!).  

We  then set out on our way to Belton House, which is funded by the National Trust in England.  Ann and Andrew volunteer for them often, so we were able to visit for free of charge.  It was a beautiful afternoon and the fall leaves were all changing.  It was honestly a beautiful house...although it was pretty cold inside.  You would think they had better insulation during these times with the stone, but a lot of wind whistles through the cracks.  It was pretty surprising you needed on a coat and scarf in order to walk around inside the house.  I wasn't able to take pictures inside of the house, but you can look them up online and see how the elitist lived during this time in life.  It was honestly unbelievable.  Their library had books floor to ceiling, and Andrew even said, "I bet they never got to the ones on the top"!  It was a lot of fun with them.  After we exited the house, you can see a grouping of trees to the right, and there is a small lake back there (pictures to follow soon!).  We walked around the lake and saw a heron, and it took roughly an hour to do so.  Even though it was cold, it was a lovely day to go for a stroll and just enjoy their company.  We talked about going to see Irish riverdancers on our next visit, which is in a fortnight  or two weeks time.  After we left the house, we went back and had celery soup for supper (it was SO good!) and had a cuppa (or cup of tea).  All in all, it was a great night!  I had to be back to school early enough to get some homework done because I went to Cadbury World in the morning!  Next blog, coming soon!
Love always,
Taylor <3