So Susan and I got back from the most amazing weekend in Paris on Sunday. I can't even begin to describe how wonderful that trip was. It was so incredibly easy to fall in love with that city. Getting to the courage to speak a little French to the locals, the yummy food (including the snails!), and absolutely delicious wine... all of it was just.... well... amazing! I am definitely making it one of my goals for Danny and I to go there together sometime. It is a very romantic city, that's for sure. I would really love to be able to experience that with him.

We went to Paris on a school sponsored trip. There was probably about 44 of us which involved a really cool decked out Christmas coach and 14 hours of travel. Our hotel was end the Red Light District of Paris, right down the street from Moulin Rouge. Once we got to Paris we were able to go off on our own so we didn't have to deal with being cooped up with everyone. Susan and I spent Friday walking the Place de Concorde, browsing through the seven floor Galleries Lafayette and ending the night with a few hours in te Louvre where we had a magnificent dinner of crepes. Saturday was another amazing day. We started it off by heading over to the Eiffel Tower and actually getting to go to the top! I was exstactic about that because I was afraid the line would be too long to make it worth it. It was really neat but absolutely freezing! Afterwards we went over to Notre Dame where we stopped to have a great lunch at the Jardin de Notre Dame consisting of wine, lamb, and chocolate cake for me and cheese for Susan. Then we toured through La Saint-Chapelle and Notre Dame. Both were breathtaking, especially the stained glass windows in Saint-Chapelle. By the time we were done with all of that the sun was setting so we just walked down some of the more touristy streets and did some good old Susan and Brittany shopping! We ended the night having dinner at a cute little restaurant next to the Louvre. We split an entre of escargo and then followed it with our main meals and a full bottle of wine. It was so much fun sitting there for about 2 1/2 hours just chit-chatting and enjoying the atmosphere. On our way back to our hotel we walked down the main street in the Red Light District, which was surprisinly touristy and not sketchy, and got pictures in front of Moulin Rouge. Overall the trip was to die for!!! Not to mention, on our way back to Swansea we actually got to see a lot of snow when we were driving through the French countryside. I never get to see snow so that was definitely one of the highlights!

I feel like that's a pretty good summary.... I could go on and on about it but I'll just leave it there. Until next time! (Only 20 days until I head back home! <3 )

 

After a wonderful weekend in Dublin, Susan and I decided to forgo London this weekend (we were invited to go with some friends) and spend the weekend in Swansea. What makes this decision even more exciting is the fact that we have all sorts of fun little plans made. We started today off by being lazy and then heading down to Tesco. There we bought all of the ingredients to make shortbread and sugar cookies from scratch. I also got the cookie icing recipe from my wonderful mommy so we got the ingredients for that too. After dinner we had a blast baking and decorating Halloween cookies! I know it's not really close to Christmas time but I have been dying to do some cookie decorating just to bring a taste of home to Swansea. So, Halloween cookies are a close second!

Tomorrow, we are going to actually cook breakfast. We bought eggs today for the sugar cookies so we're going to have a feast tomorrow! I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before but eggs are really expensive over here. We always avoided buying them but seeing as we needed some for the cookies we just went ahead and bought 15! Yay! After breakfast we're going to head out into town and go to the indoor market to pick us up all kinds of goodies to make us a really nice dinner one night this weekend. Susan's mom and aunt bought us a bottle of nice wine so we've been saving it for a night when we cook a really nice meal. This means anything other than rice and soup, pizza, sphagetti and all of those easy prepared meals. I know that the best lamb comes from Wales but I just have a really hard time eating it... I'm not a vegetarian but it makes me sad to think of eating a baby sheep. It didn't even have a chance to live! Anyway, so maybe we'll get chicken or some sort of beef?

Well, I guess that's just a little snippet of what's going on.... I love and miss you all back home!!! <3
 

So it's been a little over a week since I moved into my new flat and I'm absolutely loving it! Lets see... I love all of my flat mates! Most of them are freshman but that's ok. It just makes Susan and I feel like the mother hens of the house. We finished our two week presessional course before we moved into our flats but we had a 2500 word essay assigned to be due tomorrow. Susan and I made ourselves finish it Friday night though so we could have the weekend free. I'm really glad she had me do that because we had a blast yesterday! We went out to uni and returned all of our library books and then we jumped on a bus out to Gower. There we spent the day at Rhossili Bay which is absolutely beautiful. I just put pictures up on snapfish so check those out! Afterwards we went down to the Mumbles to get fish n chips then spent a few hours talking in this cute little pub. When I thought that the day was reaching an end we got invited to go to a bar downtown by these two guys we had been talking to at the bus stop. They were really nice but we didn't want to give them the wrong impression so we never actually accepted the invite. Instead we invited some of our friends to come into town and go out with us for just one drink. It was a lot of fun though! We rescued Rosie from working on her paper. Also, it was Susan's first night out into downtown. I think it was a slight culture shock for her. Most of the people like to dress up like its Halloween, really bizarre. We only stayed out for an hour but I think it did Susan some good. Rosie and I had been out the weekend before with a bunch of girlfriends that we met during the presessional. We had a blast!

I guess term starts tomorrow. However, Susan and I are lucky because we only have class Tuesday afternoon and Thursday! How awesome is that? We've already decided that we're going to start planning weekend trips since we have plenty of time to travel this term.

Well, I think I'm going to end it for now. I know it was really random and jumbled up but I just wanted to give some sort of quick update. Danny, I really miss you and hope your not stressing out too much over school and work! I love you so much Sweetie! Mom, hope your having fun in Wind Creek, love you! Kelley, stay out of trouble! Mrs. Connie, hope you guys are having a blast in Crete! Can't wait to hear all about it!

<3