It's been about a hundred years since I last wrote. The odds have been against me: I've been without a laptop since late February, the end of the semester was madness, and I've been traveling constantly ever since. I was supposed to go to Amsterdam with a whole bunch of kids from the London program on the 16th of April. We thought nothing could stand in the way of our long weekend of a houseboat hostel, Anne Frank's house, recreational drug use (just kidding mom and dad) and bike riding, but then the Icelandic volcano erupted, and we ended up in London instead. Christie, Sara, Liz and I joined the masses who jumped on the buses and vacationed that way. We took a day trip to Brighton and sat on the rocky beach all day eating fish and chips and drinking cider. As the sun was setting, we headed home, and it was at about that time that our skin began to rebel. Our skin (pale and sickly from a London winter) was roasted by the Southern England sun. Sara called her legs "firesticks", and the term quickly caught on among us. We couldn't rally that night, and while everyone else went out for someone's 21st birthday, the three of us fell asleep by 9. I had exams Monday and Tuesday of that week, and lots of papers and projects due. It was a stressful few days, but they flew by, and by Wednesday I found myself packed up and out of the flat and on a plane to Cannes for the Sony World Photography Awards. I met all of the people I interned with in Cannes, and there I began 4 days of non-stop work. I became the on hand IT expert, and I could always be found running frantically from floor to floor at the Pallais, multiple remotes in hand and covered in extension cords and flash drives. The awards show was a success. I walked Pablo Bartholomew, Tommaso Ausili, and Tom Stoddard (three amazing photojournalists) backstage to collect their awards, and met many other amazing artists. After Cannes I headed back to London with Valerie, the WPO intern before me. We had a great flight and night at the airport, and we parted ways in London at Luton airport where I waited for Christie, Sara, and Katy. Together the four of us flew to Malta to meet Casey and Jordan. Christie and Sara stayed at the Pergola Hotel in Mellieha Bay, and Katy and I stayed with Jordan and Casey at their timeshare at the Radisson Golden Sands. Our room was oceanside on the fifth floor and a postcard view. We relaxed for a few days, went on a day long cruise around the whole island, and explored the place via bus on land. I was so motion sick that I threw up on the cruise, but it was still the highlight of the trip. We dove of our boat and snorkeled in the Mediteranean and were served a massive traditional Maltese lunch on board. We celebrated Sara's 21st birthday while we were there. We found a cab driver named Desmond who took us to and from Paceville (pronounced Pack-Ville) for 60 euro all together (an incredible deal), but the price of all drinks (free) was our downfall. The night ended with a blowout fight in Burger King and Sara seriously accusing everyone of stealing her wallet. All was well in the end though, and everyone left Malta with a good taste in their mouth. Now I'm in Georgia, and have to run, but more as soon as possible!

Dublin round twoooo

2 Days and A Night in Dublin

Darwin's House

Just a short train ride away from London...

Cardiff for the day...WALES

Cardiff, Wales

Thoughts on Italy...

A water taxi, three buses, an airplane, several trains and sub zero temperatures later, Katy and I arrived back in London after a week of backpacking in Italy. We started in Rome where we shared a hostel near Termini station with 6 random guys- 2 coincidentally from our program in London, 2 from Denmark, 1 from Australia, and 1 from Brazil. It was called Alessandro's Palace, and although it was cheap, it was definitely not a palace and so we spent every single minute of our two days in Rome wandering the streets and running into famous monuments and sculptures. We took the train to Florence (Firenze) afterwards and stayed with our friend Erin from LMU who is studying there. We saw the David at Academia, we ate lots of amazing food, and we even made friends with a couple from Minnesota who invited us to sit at their dinner table at "Yellow Bar" and bought us tons of house wine and entertained us with hilarious stories. From Florence we took a day trip to Santa Brigita in the Chianti region and went wine tasting at the Castello de Trebbio. Our tour guide Tatiana was by far the best person we met in Italy. A favorite quote from her (said as we were getting off the tour bus in Santa Brigita): "beautiful girls beautiful girls, so beautiful i could be your mother!" She had a thick Russian accent (although she claimed to be pure Italian) and had wild box dyed platinum blonde hair that was hastily thrown into a fountain-like ponytail on top of her head. She shamelessly flirted with our other tour guide Alberto and put the wrong emphasis on every single word she said. The wine tasting was too much fun. Katy and I were the youngest people there by far, and with the exception of two middle aged women traveling alone we were the only non married couple on the tour. We made friends with M. Night Shamalan's (again spelling?) assistant director who bought us and the two middle aged women an extra bottle of wine at the castle which we all shared together. We left Florence at 5am to take an early train that cost 10 euros less than all of the other alternatives and made our way to Venice. In Venice we stayed at an amazing little bed and breakfast. We walked so much in Venice that my feet actually had purple bruises on them and so we took it easy and read a lot of books in our bed. I finished Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and read two murder mysteries. Most notably- Katy read a trashy Italian romance novel and sobbed hysterically at the end. We were majorly low on cash so one of the nights we bought 2 euro bags of cookies and ate those for dinner and polished off the bottles of wine we bought our parents in Chianti that we found out were going to cost us a couple hundred euros to send to the US. On our last day we had to check out of the hotel at 10am, but our flight out of Treviso airport wasn't until 11pm. So, we carted our suitcases around with us all day as we took a water taxi to Murano, the island famous for glass blown art. We were completely worn out and ready to go back to London by the time 11pm rolled around, and we were in a completely dejected mood because Ryan Air wouldn't let us fly with the bottles of olive oil that we bought in Florence. Katy bought a panini and tried to eat as much of her olive oil as possible before we had to go through security, and she tried to make me take shots of mine. Our Ryan Air flight was suprisingly uneventful on our way home and we made it back to our beds in London by 2am. It's good to be home :)