A Very Lucky Girl

To refresh your memory, our flight from Prague to Amsterdam was cancelled so we were en route back to London to make sure we would make our flight on May 1st. We landed at London Stansted Airport shortly after midnight, which really shouldn't even be considered a London airport seeing as it's 40 miles outside of London proper. At this point all public transport into London had stopped running and the first train was scheduled to depart at 5:30 AM. We were exhausted, starving, and freezing. We addressed the middle problem first. Burger King was the only open restaurant in the facility so we begrudgingly got in line. Jordan's nuggets appeared as though they had been sitting in a warmer since 8 AM and my burger was doused in mayonnaise to the point of in-edibility. We managed a few bites before focusing on our next problem: exhaustion.  Since Stansted was so far outside of London we weren't able to get a hostel and resigned ourselves to an airport slumber party for 2....

We left our hostel in Budapest shortly after 4:30 AM  to catch our 5:40 AM train. Construction prevented us from using the metro, so we ended up having to walk a mile to the train station. Normally, I would have felt uncomfortable walking in a strange city in the dark, but Budapest was fairly lively for 4:30 AM! Our train trip to Prague was uneventful and we arrived just a few minutes after noon.  Hostel Ananas  was located right off Wenceslas Square. We dumped our backpacks in the luggage room and went in search of lunch. Nothing sounded amazing and we ended up at an Asian restaurant where I ate THE best spring roll. We perused the open market in search of a ring for Jordan, but came up empty handed. We headed for the Old Town Square to see the Prague astronomical clock, which was undergoing renovations. We still decided to climb the clock tower for some killer views of the city! We meandered through the alleys of Prague in the general direction of the Charles Bridg...

Our journey to Budapest started out relatively rocky. Keep in mind that we speak zero Italian. We arrived at the train station early (per usual) and scanned the board for our departure platform. Our first train was heading to Bologna, Italy where we would then board our night train. Underneath the platform listings we saw a running header that listed Firenze, Venezia and Bologna as places with cancelled trains (at least, that's what I thought it said...). We went straight to the customer service desk and took a number, wanting to confirm before properly panicking. I have never in my life been so happy to be wrong.  We located the platform and boarded our non-cancelled train at 8:20 PM with no issue. We were scheduled to arrive in Bologna at 10:35 PM with 22 minutes to catch our connecting train. However, our train from Rome ended up slowing down and we pulled into Bologna at 10:45 PM. We had 12 minutes to find our next platform. We bounded off the train and the race was o...

We arrived in Nice on Monday evening around 8 PM and quickly located our hostel just two blocks down from the train station. We checked into Hostel Baccarat  and a very kind man that we think was the owner upgraded us from our 10 bed dorm to a private room at no extra charge. After the day we spent dealing with the train delay in Paris our voyage was looking up! We rode up in the world's smallest elevator, tossed our backpacks in the room, and marveled at the attached private bathroom before heading downstairs in search of food.We stopped at the front desk again to ask for a map and restaurant suggestions. The nice man drew a line down the main street and told us to walk all the way down it until we reached the restaurants. We thanked him and headed out into the nice Nice night.  After taking a couple of wrong turns we found ourselves on the main avenue, but couldn't see a hotbed of lights and activity at the southern end. Instead, we stumbled into the nearest Mcdonald'...

My sister-in-law and I recently returned from a 13 day adventure around Europe and I couldn't think of a better avenue to share our experience. We both received a multitude of questions of how we planned, executed the plan, and saved $$ for the plan. Do you sense a "plan" theme? Stay tuned, not very much actually went according to plan once we were in motion.  Jordan and I talked on and off about making this trip a reality, but it honestly came together fairly spontaneously. Jordan ordered her passport in January and we booked our trans-Atlantic flights in February, with only about 2 months to go. We decided on April 19th through May 1st, strategically celebrating Jordan's 23rd birthday in the middle! Once dates were selected, destination decisions were made. With this being Jordan's first out of country trip (and her very first flight!), I wanted her to pick most of the places. I had 2 places on my wish list: Nice, France and Budapest, Hungary. After stud...

First. Finest. Forever. I cannot count how many times I've been asked "are you in a sorority?" since continuing school at OU instead of TCU. Yes. But it's complicated.  I went through rush during my freshman fall semester at TCU. I wore the dresses, pulled at my strapless bra, and sweated through my perfume as we rushees waited to file into each house. I sipped the cucumber water and discreetly licked the sugar rim from the glass on the fancy lemonade day. I spilled my drink TWICE at the same house. They didn't ask me back after the second accident. I don't blame them.  On Pref night I had two houses left: Gamma Phi Beta and Alpha Delta Pi. Both had beautiful pref night ceremonies, but I felt most at home in Alpha Delta Pi. They presented each girl with a giant fake diamond that represented something about her the chapter valued. I don't remember a whole lot about my TCU semester, but I remember my trait being "independence." The fact t...

A week ago Saturday found me aimlessly scrolling the Internet. And the new timeline feature on Facebook (which I was at first very much against, but then finally gave in to because of my uncontrollable lust for a cover photo. I also wanted to delete all embarrassing status updates and pictures from previous years before they became public) is truly conducive to heavy duty creeping. I found myself on Marianne's profile (a friend from North Carolina that I still keep in touch with) meandering between the months in 2010. During that period I wasted endless amounts of time, therefore explaining the multiple wall posts from me adorning her profile.  In November 2010 I coated her profile with videos to make up for our lack of skype dates. One of them broke my heart, and I teared up watching it. For one, I looked so sick. Unbelievably skinny, I didn't even sound like myself. I could hear the desparation in my own voice as I explained to her how my life was falling apart and that I ...