A Very Lucky Girl

We took an early train out of Switzerland, bound for Paris! We passed endless yellow field on the way in and when we arrived and tried to navigate the metro a guy handed me a free metro ticket. Paris was off to a great start! Until we got to the Louvre. We walked all around, looking for an entrance, until we saw the sign stating it was closed on Tuesdays. Guess what day it was? Typical. No Mona Lisa for me this trip. I had arranged to stay with one of my friends, Penelope, who I knew from my North Carolina days, so with our afternoon plans shot to hell, we headed toward her apartment through the Jardin de Tuileries. We only got slightly lost and I threw myself down on the ground in the nearest park and prepared to have a slight breakdown. I hadn't been there 3 seconds before a policeman asked me to move to a different patch of grass. I still have no idea as to why. But I followed his instructions and moved myself and my emotions. I was tired of planning, tired of plans not going as...

I know that it looks like I don't do any schoolwork at all. Even my friends here in the exchange program scoff at the four hours of class I attended each week. But today was the culmination of weeks of preparation for a Shakespeare performance. I chose a Shakespeare module in Dundee because I thought it would be really awesome to learn Shakespeare in depth near the country of his birth. One thing I've come away with is that I don't believe Shakespeare was written to be said in an American accent. I felt so inferior among the proper accents in my tutorial! A requirement of the course instructed each tutorial group (there were three) to choose a scene from any of the plays we read, perfect it over the course of the term, and perform it on March 26. My group was on the smaller side and had only eight people in it. We finally settled on an abridged version of the final scene in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The scene has loads of characters in it so we had to get c...

I haven't been on any big trips since going to Dublin, but a lot of exciting things are coming up in the next few weeks and I can't wait to share them with you all! I've been saving my cash for my upcoming adventures and writing my final essays. I will be done with all things academic related on March 31st! Which means I'll have almost two full months to travel and just soak up Europe without the drag of having to go to 4 hours of class a week. Like ugh. My goal is to complete all of my assignments before Hannah and Megan arrive next week! I've finished one essay and am 1,000 words into my Shakespeare one. It's slow going, but I only have four days until Hannah gets here!! She arrives in Dundee on Tuesday and I am so excited, considering I haven't seen her since August. Megan arrives a couple of days after her and then we have a few days as a trio, recreating our SB12 vacation in NYC. I cannot wait to show them around my home. Being the obnoxious planner th...

I hope you sang the title in your best "no one on the corner has swagga like us" rendition. I love my class schedule! Oh, pardon me, my module schedule. Classes are modules here and a major is your course of study. Slowly learning the lingo. On Mondays, Daniel teaches Scottish Literature from 1-3 pm in Dalhousie. And I am telling you right now that I will not miss a single class. For one, there are only 11 weeks of module instruction! Therefore, I only have 9 more of those classes! Tragedy. I could listen to his accent for an entire day. Weeks. But I'll take the two hours I get every Monday. I find it infinitely easier to pay attention to what is being taught when it is pleasant to listen to. Also occurring on a weekly Monday morning basis is the fire alarm for Belmont Flats. Similar to how the tornado siren is tested every Saturday at noon in Oklahoma, someone tests the fire alarm at 11 am every Monday. I expect Nat to remind me every week so that I don't pee my f...

It's very humbling to come to a brand new (to me) country, that is in fact older than my own country, and interact with several different cultures at once. Classes don't start until Monday, but I've already gathered a wealth of facts that I never knew before. Boots are not the most comfortable shoes to get lost in It's never too soon to watch Orange Is The New Black with a new friend and then comment on the phallic shaped crackers in our soup. Thanks Nat.  Time changes are the bane of my existence. You mean I have finished lunch and my American friends have barely touched breakfast?  Always carry a grocery bag with you because you never know when you might come across Tesco/Poundland/Lidl and suddenly need to grocery shop. On a related note, large market trips are impossible.  Lemon vodka is the direct equivalent of Smirnoff ice and I will continue to drink it shamelessly. Sluuuurp. Don't believe Aussie's when they tell you they live in fear of the dropbe...

This budding blogger hit 10,000 page views at 10:24 AM on Sunday morning, November 11th.  I never thought that my meager words would reach so many corners of the world. People in Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Latvia, Italy, Morocco, Spain, Australia, Egypt, Japan, the Netherlands, India, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates (what?), Brazil, and several other nations have faithfully lurked averyluckygirl-taylor.blogspot.com.  I don't know how you found me, but I'm grateful to you. For silently encouraging me to do something that I love, even when it gets hard.  And to the 12% of you that are using Internet Explorer...a special shout out to the patience you must posses waiting for the page to load. You should be rewarded.  Why stop now? A Very Lucky Girl could go for 15,000.