This Is It.

Wow. Our last day in Oxford.

And boy was it a good one.

We finished our finals a few days ago, which was awesome.

Yesterday we went on a boat ride up and down the Thames. We had lunch on the boat and stopped in a little town down the river. It was freakishly cold yesterday, therefore the whole outing actually sounds a lot cooler than it was.

Today we woke up and had to clean up around the house some. It wasn't too bad, but we did find some mystery leftovers in our floor's refrigerator covered in mold. That was pretty much a staple in every kitchen though. 

While Ashley enjoyed her last Tom's Le Club from On the Hoof, Emily headed down to Christ Church for the last time. She ate her last meal in the Great Hall (yes, the one from Harry Potter) with the other study abroaders who worked there this semester. It was delicious and cheap.

Then we had a great afternoon of stocking up on Ben's Cookies (duh) and wandering around town picking up some last minute gifts (Emily procrastinates). We enjoyed our last walk down Cornmarket, one of our favorite streets, and then a nice walk through Jericho, another of our favorite areas in town.

After packing and getting our room checked by Janine (the program director) a few of us headed to the Royal Oak pub for dinner. Ashley ate the best fish and chips of her life. Then we stopped by G&D's for our last ice cream.

All in all, we have to say it was one of the best days in Oxford, doing almost all of our favorite things and soaking it all in. It's so sad to say goodbye to someplace that has become so familiar to us in such a short time. We truly love this town and have learned so, so, so much this semester.

But...tomorrow is a new day. A day in which we will be reunited with people we've been missing for a while. We can't wait to see everyone and tell you more about our adventures IN PERSON!!!

ZAC

Gutentaug from Berlin.

or actually we're back now, but just barely and we like to try and keep our German up. 

We had an amazing time skipping school and jet-setting off to Germany.

Europe has increased our rebellious side. 

So anyways we got to Berlin on Thursday after traveling all night long and met up with our great tour guide Oliver who showed us around Berlin.

Oliver, our travel mate Jessica's old friend from high school, showed us around the city Thursday and Saturday introducing us to the unseen side of Berlin. Or just the nontouristy sections we guess. Friday we did the Fat Tire Bike Tour...our 4th and last, and got a free t-shirts out of it! Or maybe more like an 80 Euro t-shirt, but we don't like to think of it like that...

We went to some crazy Turkish markets, had the best falafal in Berlin and consumed more than our fair share of kebabs. 

Ashley would have to say the highlight for her (besides what will be mentioned later) was going to Oliver's house to have a traditional German meal of ham, sauerkraut and potatoes. DELISH! Berlin was very interesting...Ashley decided "cool" didn't quite fit, since everything kind of sucked there the past 60 years...so "interesting" was a better adjective.

Emily's highlight was, if you haven't seen the pictures yet, ZAC EFRON.

YES, we saw him, breathed in his scent, and were punched and kicked and attacked by fifteen year old crazy German girls. 

The story goes like this...

We decided to go see a movie Saturday in Potzdamerplatz because it was "cheap" and they had movies in English. So we decided on Defiance (very good).

So we get to the theater and see all these 17 Again posters and gaterailings around and were a bit confused. So Emily went the next morning and tried to figure out what was going on. Thanks to google, we found out that Zac was going to be in Berlin today, grabbed our cameras and ran back to the theater.

It was quite the experience. We waited two hours until the beginning of the premiere (because we had nothing else to do and this was free) and lo and behold he came.

Girls went nuts.

It was hilarious.

Ashley's sister is going to be crazy jealous.

So now we are back and have exactly one week left.

CRAZY.

We are trying to do as many Oxford things as possible in the next seven days, i.e. Nando's, Ben's Cookies, On the Hoof, University Parks, Tea Parties, Backyard cook outs, Green's Cafe, City Center in general...

just enjoying everything and all things Oxford.

We are both excited to come home and see everyone, but looove Oxford so much, it will be tough to leave and reenter the "real world" as Ashley likes to refer to it.

Hope this last week goes quickly for you as we know you are dying to see us. 

Peace & Reconciliation,

Em and Ash

Our 10 Day Road Trip...Basically...and beyond

We're sorry, we're sorry, we're sorry. We do not update regularly enough. For that, we are sorry.

Granted, it's hard to update when your nearest computer is 10 days away. 

So now we have been on our huge group trip. It was pretty legit. Sometimes long, but overall legit. Quite a bit of charter bus time, but who doesn't love that? Oh wait...Ashley gets motion sickness? Even so, you know we have fun in any and every situation.

Here we go...I will try to make it as concise as possible, but get ready. It's a long post.

So we started the trip off by visiting Verdun, France where one of the largest battles of WWI was fought. It was very educational, but kind of depressing. Then we went to Strasbourg, France where we went on a tour of the Council of Europe which is basically like the United Nations, but for just Europe.

Then it was off to our new favorite place...SWITZERLAND!!!! We spent an afternoon in Interlaken and then went to our hotel in Wilderswil. The hotel was really cool as it was perched on the side of a mountain. Cool, but quite the trek to get there. On Wednesday morning, we woke up ready to enjoy possibly one of our favorite days all semester. We took our bus into Grindelwald where we decided to go ice skating. 

After lunch, we hit up the slopes. No not skiing. Better. Yes. SLEDDING. We 

were expecting to go down the mountain via tubes, but we soon learned that we were going to have to master legit Swiss sleds. After looking around, we (us, Bailey, and Jen) noticed that we were all wearing Siggie sweatshirts. Naturally, we had to capture the moment.

After Switzerland, it was off to Taize, a French monastery. We were a little skeptical at first, but when we got there we realized it was a lot like Church camp. Our favorite part was group time every morning. It was really cool to get to interact and talk to kids (we were the oldest group there. Most of the people we talked to were around 16 or 17) from other countries. This is a picture of some people from ACU and some girls from France and Germany.

Our last day and a half of the trip was spent in Paris. Since we'd been already, it was nice to do a few things and then relax and enjoy some of our favorite places (i.e. Montmarte). Other than that, we spent our last time in Paris this semester doing what we do best...eating crepes. We love that city so much and hope we can return someday.

And now we've been back in Oxford for about a week. A rundown of our week? Ok. Well, homework (duh). Other than that we as a group of Texans decided that we're sick and tired of missing Mexican Food. Therefore, we had Mexican Food night, complete with homemade salsas, queso, and lots of tacos!

Since we're all about group unity now, the girls decided to band together and have dessert night on Friday. In case you weren't all aware. Girls. Love. Chocolate. The night was made complete with "When Harry Met Sally" and guest appearances by Amy Couchman and Andrea Lucado. Shout out to Miss Payton Jones in this next picture.

The more time we spend here walking around, going into small shops, and spending time with the rest of our group, the more we love it. It's sad to think that there's only about three weeks left. The last travel break is this weekend and we will be spending it in....(drumroll please).....OXFORD!! That's right. It's a long story, but we couldn't be happier about the way things are turning out. We're already planning cookouts, pajama parties, and lots of time outside in (hopefully) beautiful weather that we've started to experience all with some really amazing people. Can't wait to tell you all about it! And hopefully our next post will be sometime while we're still IN Oxford...

We Aren't Yanks!

So it has been a little while, we understand, from our last entry till now...

Sorry, but to spoil all the amazing things we saw... and let's be real, conquering Europe, and to write about it and have that writing not live up to it's full glory... it's daunting.

I hope this does it justice.

SO, spring break 2009:

Emily, Ashley, Jen and Bailey- conquering nations.  

We flew into Paris early Saturday morning (& when we say early we mean...kinda spent the night in the airport to catch our flight early) It was wicked though, Ashley finally got to put her hiking backpack to good use. Now she can wear it with pride. 

In Paris we:

saw the Arch de Triumph, got egg and cheese crepes, saw the Moulin Rouge, went to the Eiffel Tower,  ate Nutella crepes, took a bike tour, got chicken and cheese crepes, went to the Louvre, 

ate ham and cheese crepes, and walked up to Sacre Coeur.

Paris, what a city.

Next was Florence:

We stayed at the Hotel Tina/Sampoli (shout out to J'lyn) and pretty much sacked the market the first two days making sure to throw in our Texas accents here and there to rack us up some "poor southern girl" discounts. Italy sure does love Texas. Emily bought this sick leather purse and Ashley finally achieved her dream of becoming the proud owner of a wicked leather motorcycle jacket. Which by the way, took much persistence and peer pressure from the other three before she gave in. Florence was wonderful, just extremely chilled out. 

We then took an amazing train to Rome on Thursday (Tuscany is breathtakingly beautiful. Any picture we took could have been used for a postcard) and immediately set out to find the...Colosseum! Pretty brilliant. It's amazing, people literally have apartments that overlook onto the colosseum. 

After that we, uh, went down to the Trevi Fountain and ate dinner where our waiter FELL in love with Bailey. Hard core. Ashley got a free cappuccino and the other three got free gelato from it. Thank you Bailey for being so hott! The next day Bailey and Emily went over to the Vatican while Ashley nursed Jen back to health. Don't worry though Jen was fine and they met back up with the other two for the afternoon's festivities: back to the Trevi fountain. We just love us some Trevi. Then we got all fancified up and went out to eat near the Spanish Steps! Bella. The last day of spring break was consumed in finding the Pantheon, the stone mouth that bites your hand off, and the forum. Nobody had their hand bit off for lying though...we're all good Christian Texas girls of course! hahaha. 

We flew back to Oxford early Sunday morning to an eventful week of Oxford nothing. 

Although, it seems we left Oxford cold and dreary and came back to it warm and beautiful! Thanks goodness for spring. 

Spring break was full of interesting characters and eventful situations, but we made it out alive. 

Now we're getting ready to beat down France, Germany and Switzerland on our big group trip this Saturday.

Should be a party.

This long long entry is dedicated to FAverFAVE.

Taking the world by storm,

Em and Ash

Viva Barcelona

Well all, it seems like just a few days ago that we returned from Spain and now we're off to Paris, Florence, and Rome for Spring Break. Oh wait...that's exactly the case. 

Last weekend was spent in Barcelona. We think we are safe in saying that it is different from anything we've ever done before. We enjoyed a legit bike tour with lunch on the beach and warmth. That's right...WARMTH. Emily wore shorts one day. It was revolutionary. The bike tour took us around to all the historical places in Barcelona that we had no idea even existed. The guide was from Texas so it was nice to actually have someone understand what we were saying. Let's just say high school Spanish did not fully equip us for this adventure. This is a picture of us on our bikes with our new friend Amy Jo. Siggies is just inescapable, but we're not complaining.

This week was full of lots of homework, papers, projects, presentations, papers, etc. They meant it when they said STUDY Abroad.

And now we're about to leave for Paris. Literally, just a few hours from now. We're going with a small group: the two of us, and our partners in crime, Jen and Bailey. We cannot even tell you how excited we are about a whole week of relaxation and no homework. We're pretty confident it will be even better than Barcelona!

That's all for now. It could be more, but there is packing to be done. Don't worry though, we're storing up tons of stories to tell you all when we get back. :)

XOXO....oh wait? No Gossip Girl in England. Bailey has withdrawals.

Splish Splash

So it has been a while since we last updated this thing. 

Our deepest apologies. 

Homework has just been consuming our free time these past two weeks. (gross i know, homework in oxford? yeah, it shocked us too)

Last Friday we went to go see "He's Just Not That Into You." That was a TREAT. It was nice to do something "normal" for a change.

except in British movie theaters you have an assigned seat, kind of like if you were going to watch a play...so that was interesting. 

The next day we went to Bath, to party like the Romans. 

or bathe?

It was very interesting to say the least. We saw some street performers use fireworks in, um, unique ways. (ask for pictures)

We also went and got Sally Lunn's buns. The buns were as exceptional as the name Sally Lunn's Buns. We just walked the rest of the day taking in the dreary Bath weather, picturing ourselves in some sort of Jane Austen movie.

Or Ashley was at least.

This week has been rather uneventful. Papers and tests and whatnot. blah. We are getting use to things here so we don't make as many "stupid American mistakes," which probably makes our blog less interesting...

we are looking forward to consuming a wonderful Ben's cookie this weekend! Yum.

We miss not being in Abilene for singsong and can't wait to see video! But we know Carmen will steal the show!

The weather is warming up and we are loving it! Although we may have just jinxed ourselves. Golly. 

Cheers!

We're Handing You No Blarney

Well, we've made it to and from Ireland safe and sound and we loved the Irish so much, we're thinking of dying our hair red and changing our last names to something with an 'O' in front of it. Maybe not...

There's lots to report about this trip, so bear with us. Hopefully it will be entertaining? Interesting? Anything?

Anyway, we arrived in Cork, Ireland on Thursday night where we met up with 3 guys from our group that had arrived earlier that day. We stayed at a really cool hostel that was close to the bus stop and close to city centre, so we were ready to dive right in to Cork. We have just one word for Thursday night: Karaoke. Don't worry. With the help of Bailey and Jen, we're sure we did you all proud with our rendition of Britney Spears' "Piece of Me."

Friday morning, we woke up and took a train to Cobh (pronounced 'Cove.' I don't really get it either) which was right on the coast. It was so beautiful. AND it was the last port of the Titanic. Naturally, we were eager to imitate Jack and Rose on the bow of the boat. Also in Cobh, we tried to perfect our heel clicking (duh). This is us getting really close.

      v Emily

Next was Blarney, a quaint little town near Cork. We kissed the Blarney stone at the castle, which was near death-defying. It was

 WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY high up and we had to turn upside down to kiss it. That along with Ashley's fear of heights did not make a great combination, but she's so brave that it was not even a problem. 

It is said that when you kiss the Blarney stone, you receive the "gift of gab," and eloquence. We kind of wish it was something we didn't already have, but you can never have too much of a good thing, we think. 

Ashley>

                                                                 

Our last day in Cork was spent exploring and taking pictures. There is a tower in Cork that you can climb and ring bells heard throughout the city, but we had bought quite a few souvenirs by this point, so 5 euros wasn't very tempting. Instead, we met three Irish rap stars. Ok, not stars, but they thought so. They proposed a rap battle with a guy in our group and proceeded to school him. They were great, but we're a little concerned about the content of their songs. Let's just say, the FBI is out to get them apparently.

So there is Ireland in a somewhat large nutshell. We had to wake up incredibly early on Sunday morning, and our plane had a few technical difficulties causing us to nearly miss our bus from London to Oxford. We seriously ran through the airport. Just like Sam in Love Actually, but with worse music, no film crew, and no Hugh Grant or Liam Neeson. But apart from those few things, it was EXACTLY like it.

Until more cool stuff happens...

The British do America better than the Americans

Here are some things we have noticed that are a bit different from Abilene/ we didn't expect/ whatever we feel like saying...

they are all random. but we hope we can enlighten you.

1. every girl wears opaque tights and skirts. 

    literally. I think they can tell we're American by our wearing jeans...and sperrys.

2. We would not ride a bike around oxford to save our lives.

    We take our lives into our own hands just walking around...

3. Dr. Pepper is actually better here.

4. We live off of frosties, tea, digestives, bagels and porkchops.

5. You can NOT call people "ma'am" or "sir."

    We have probably offended many people; "ma'am" and "sir" are only suppose to be used for the king and queen.

6. British sinks have two water faucets. One for cold and one for hot.

     or let me rephrase that; one for titanic ice water and one for boiling third degree burn water.

7. We LOVE rugby. 

8. People actually do wear lots of red.

     Thanks study abroad department.

9. The british love the word "yall" & all things Texas.

     we're magical. 

...that's all we can think of; but we're sure we'll add to this later.

This week has just been a typical oxfordian week. 

Emily got a GREAT volunteer job working at Christ Church.

Ashley is still looking...  

This weekend should be wicked chill,  just a bunch of rambling around the city. 

and then we will start getting ready to go to Ireland on Thursday...less than a week away! 

Cool, well until we blog again...

For the First Time, We Feel....WICKED

Wednesday is market day! We officially love market day. We 

bought lots of yummy cooking ingredients. However, we're not exactly chefs. Emily has a little experience

 from watching her mom, but other than that, it's mostly guesswork. Emily made

 some killer porkchops one night, and as you can see, Ashley roasts a mean new potato.

This weekend, we took a trip into London. The main reason we went was to see Wicked, which we're sure you're all familiar with. We took a train to London, bought our tickets, and then realized that we had pretty much no plan for the day. 

We saw this cute little old man selling tickets for a bus tour. After talking to him for a while, he asked if we were from New York. Much better than Kentucky, we think. We decided to take the tour to all the basic tourist spots in London, where we could get on and off to take pickies. And boy did we take pickies. We saw just about everything. Somewhere between Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral, it occurred to us that the whole group is taking a bike tour of London later this semester....whoops. We've heard London is cooler the second time around anyways. 

Time drew near to the big event and we started getting REALLY excited. Bailey's birthday was this weekend so we ate some delicious Italian food before the show as a birthday feast. We had pretty good seats. The show was AMAZING. We can't even stress it enough. Ashley had to tell Emily to shut up a couple of times for singing along too much. And Emily may or may not have cried a little. Anyway, the show was great, and was made only better by Fiyero.

We've just accepted the fact...

welcome back.

well let's see what's been happening....

Classes have begun. but that is NOT exciting, so moving on.

A group of us tried to go to the Red Lion to watch the inauguration last night. (because we were told every British person alive was super excited about it and thought it would be fun to watch it with those unlike ourselves) but apparently...they really don't care. haha. It was not showing anywhere so we just came back and watched it at the house.

but maybe that was the best. 

we sang the national anthem.

or at least Ashley and Jen did.

These are just going to be random stories...

So us and our trusty sidekick Jen went to Border's bookstore today because Emily is in the hoity-toity CS Lewis class and needed the Chronicles of Narnia.

Well being the friendly American (or lost American) Ashley is, she went and asked the worker for help. Long story short he thought we were from Kentucky.

KENTUCKY?! REALLY?! We wonder if he has met anyone from Kentucky to compare us to...

the only famous person we can think of from there is Johnny Depp.

I don't think we are like him at all.

but...yeah, no. nothing.

and then Ashley led us to the fire escape exit thinking it was the real exit, so we all went up there and pushed against the door. 

only for it to obviously not open and we just had to turn around and walk away.

just picture that. 

& we saw a little British woman judging us. hahahahaha.

THEN.

we went to the open market. It is awesome. It's what you would think of when thinking of a market. It was just like in My Fair Lady where Eliza sells flowers...if you've seen that.

weird concept, we know.

anyways, we have no idea what we are doing anywhere we go. We have accepted that...

so as we are in the market we really wanted this loaf of cake, so Ashley takes it because she is going to pay for it...well we didn't know you were suppose to pay for it at the table you picked it up from, so we walked away.

basically stealing the cake.

hahaha.

As we walk across the market and meet up with others in our group, we learned...yeah, we were suppose to pay for that back there...we shoplifted in Oxford.

but DONT WORRY...we went back and paid.

we don't condone pinching.

welp, hope all is well where you are.

Look Familiar?

Let's see....it's been a busy few first days in Oxford. But we are loving every minute of it.

On our second day here we did lots of boring orientation meetings. Afterwards, we visited this hidden pub in town called The Turf. When we say hidden, we literally mean a labyrinth. The pub was really cool AND historical. It's probably best known for getting President Bill Clinton into a bit of trouble a few years back for being the place where he did not inhale marijuana.

We went "rambling" around a park near the house called "University Parks" on Saturday. Then we went to the covered market for lunch and shopping. As we came out of the market, 

our jaws DROPPED. The lovely young woman to the right was just chilling with a friend (the girl, not the goat thing). We don't know if anyone else is a fan of The Chronicles of Narnia, but we feel like it was only fitting to see the actress who plays Susan while we're visiting the land of C.S. Lewis. AKA Anna Popplewell, who we later discovered through imdb.com is studying at one of the colleges here in Oxford.

Later, we went to this pizza place one street over from the house. We don't think we were very good at making friends with the waitress, who we think was French. Word to the wise, if you're ever in Europe, don't eat pizza with your hands. Take the extra time to cut it to avoid dirty stares. Thankfully, we had our friend Taylor across the table telling us how we were fulfilling the role of "annoying Americans." We're really good at it.

We Made It.

Cheerio from foggy Oxford town! Wow, we know that picture is big... we're experiencing technical difficulties...Ashley and her new mac, especially in a new country and on 30 hours of no sleep, equals a big picture. for now.

 anyways. 

We made is through the long trek. aka, a massively long and turbulent plane ride. 

We aren't exactly sure how this little "blog" is going to work...

Ashley might post something one day, Emily the next...it's just a joint adventure.

Well, hm...let's see...today we had our first experience at "On the Hoof"

yum. delicious.

After watching The Holiday last semester, Ashley made it her goal to befriend young British children. Who would have thought that her goal was fulfilled our first night here at On the Hoof?!? We made friends with some eighth grade girls.

Ashley gave them a dime and she thinks they will treasure it forever.

or go exchange it for about 4 pence.

People really do talk with accents here.

it's cool... it's kind of like we are extras in SpiceWorld.

or Harry Potter.

I am sure this blog will get more interesting as we actually do stuff... so forgive this first entry.

but it's better than the whole... "we've never done this before, we don't know what to write" 

hopefully.

Grace and Peace,

ashley and emily oxfordians.