A bittersweet day

Yesterday I made that post about our awesome day. It was truly awesome but it had the potential to be horrendous. Let me tell you what happened. The night before we ate dinner at a restaurant right outside our hostel. It was good food but the whole experience was a nightmare. First of all the guy really wanted us to ate there and had promised us free drinks, dessert and 10% off our dinner. We were looking for a place to eat anyways so we sat down. He totally ripped us off and wouldn't give us our check for 2 hours because he needed the tables to look full. So once we finally got us our check, it was not what he said and we argued but he wouldn't budge and we wanted to get out of there anyways. Well 8 hours later, all three of us are up. Food poisoning. Eww. I wake up with time of month cramps on top of being sick. The next day we were going on a walking tour of Athens and Heidi almost didn't go, but then decided too. On the the walking tour, I got sunburned. During the course of the afternoon we went to an ATM and I put my card in to get money and the machine wouldn't give it back. It said "The transaction has timed out. The card has been captured. Please contact the provider." Well we tried to call the bank I used it at, no answer. They don't open until Monday and we will be half way to Santorini by then. I wasn't too worried about for the rest of the day because I knew the card was safe in a machine and not out wandering the streets. Later in the day, we still all have serious gastrointestinal problems going on (I'll leave it at that), and decided not to eat anything. We each downed two bottles of Gatorade though and immediately felt better. We were really dehydrated. Last night we went to the movie theater. Here that means on a rooftop with the lit up Acropolis on one side of you and watching the movie on a big projector screen. It was so fun! We saw Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (I wouldn't reccommend it) in English with Greek subtitles. But the whole experience was fun! After the movie I started making phone calls and it was like pulling teeth to try and explain the situation. I had to by a calling card to talk with the bank and another credit card company. It had 222 minutes on it and now only about 40. I think I'm all sorted now, but I will still have about $120 in fees to pay in order to cash now. But what's done is done. Oh well.

As you can see it COULD have been a really horrible day. But luckily the Lord blessed me with patience, beautiful weather, and the opportunity to be in Athens so I was okay with it all. Miss you all, I'll be back to the states before I know it!

The place of Gods

I am in Greece. We flew into Athens yesterday and I absolutely love it here! We did all the touristy stuff today, the Acropolis, Temple of Zeus, original Olympis sites, my favorite The Theatre of Dionysis. It is so beautiful here, and wicked hot!!!!! But I love it. We'll have fun tomorrow again and then take a ferry early Monday morning out to the Greek island of Santorini. I am so PSYCHED!!!!!! I can't believe that the trip is coming to a close. I have had so much fun and seen so much. Today was completely surreal for me. The places I saw today were places I have dreamed of visiting since I was in fifth grade!!! WOW!!! It was awesome. Talk to you later!

all roads lead to rome

paris was awesome! im in an internet cafe right now and the keyboqrd is totqlly different. and it*s really hard to type, so im sorry if you cant read this, haha. were gettin on a train to rome tonight, yay!!! ok this is too hard to type, see you later!!!

paris

(phone post again) hey everyone. i've been in london for the last couple days. heidi, michelle and i took a 5:25 train to paris this morning. weare now in our hostel waiting to get into our room. it's in a pretty part of town it feels pretty good so far. i probably won't get around to posting any pics for a couple weeks, sorry. but i'll let you know where i am :) BONJOUR...ps: i don't speak a lick of french, oh boy!!!

I'm in Scotland!!!

Fair warning, im typing this on my phone so i may use abbrreviations and the grammer will be terrible. i just wanted to give everyone an update that im in scotland and i absolutely LOVE it here. it beats out england in every respect!!! the people here are sooo friendly and love talking to us and finding why we are here. in nurse i went around with today is one of the nicest ladies i've ever met! the scenery here is breathtaking. no nessie sighting yet, but we did look for her yesterday :) we went to a castle that was down on the loch and it was beautiful. i only have wonderful things to say about scotland!!!! we have been in Inverness for a couple days and tomro we are going to do some touristy stuff and go to erin's sister's house in blackford for the weekend before heading to london for a couple days and then off to paris!!! i can't believe that this stidy abroad is coming to a close so soon. i have learned so much. today was the last nursing day and now we are on holiday!!! well, my hand hurts from typing on this tiny keyboard, so i'm heading off, but best wishes to all from SCOTLAND!!!! cheers

April showers bring May FLOWERS

This weekend's trip I was on a flower kick. I took a lot of pictures of flowers. These are quick, easy uploads and don't require explanation so I decided to put these up. I don't update the blog too often because I'm too busy having fun and I don't want to spend the time putting pictures up and writing captions. Don't worry, you'll see them all eventually!!

Cheers from England!!

Fast Forward Fountains Abbey

It started off as a beautiful calm morning, but it soon turned into a crazy day. If something could go wrong, it did. I probably shouldn't say that, more could have happened, but it was a day of surprises! Some of these details you might not care about, but I just wanted to get the whole experience down. The link for the pictures are at the end.

The morning bus comes to the dorms at 8:20, but the train out of town to get to Fountains Abbey was too close to when the bus would drop us off. We decided to catch an earlier bus up the road. When we got there in the morning, the schedule that was posted was different than what we found online, so we had missed it. As we were checking the schedule, the University bus that we normally take drove down the road to the dorms. We needed to be on that bus, but there was NO way to get back up to the dorms in time to catch it. So we stood on the side of the road and flagged it down as it was coming down. I've never felt like such an idiot in my life. The bus driver was going to stop, but then he did like 20 feet passed us. He was mad.

We got to the train station and looked at the board. The train for Leeds was leaving in 2 minutes on the platform on the farthest end of the station. We ran and hopped on with maybe 30 seconds to spare. As we open the train time table, we realized that we had just gotten onto the train that stopped at every station between Huddersfield and Leeds. It got us there 20 minutes later than the straight through train that would have left 10 minutes later at Huddersfield. Oops.

We get to Leeds and talk to friendly person behind the counter to see what the fastest way to Fountains Abbey was. We had looked it up online the night before, but we wanted to check. She was no help and wasn't even making any sense. She was really friendly, but didn't know what she was talking about. She was telling us that the first available bus to take us to Fountains Abbey got there at 3:30, and the last bus out was at 2:30. So we would have to leave before we got there? What? Ok, so we stick to the original ''plan.''

We get a bus from Leeds (a really nice double decker) to Rippon. It was a beautiful sceneic drive and I'm glad I stayed awake for it. Some of the other girls slept, we'd been up since 6am to catch the early bus that didn't exist. Once in Rippon, we mosied around the town for 2 hours, ate lunch in a pub, and got rained on.

Once the shuttle bus FINALLY came to take us to Fountains Abbey at about 2:00, we were so ready to just GET THERE!!! The bus driver took the most crazy route to get there. We passed at least 3 signs that said FOUTAINS ABBEY ---> 2 miles, and we went <---. I guess that was the route that she was supposed to take, and we only picked up one other person on the way there. It was a little bus; she was driving SOOO fast down these one lane back country roads. It still took us an HOUR to get there though.

Enter Fountains Abbey. Commence rain. To read more about the history CLICK HERE. We ran through the park, because we only had an hour and half until the last bus out of Fountains Abbey left. We were literally running at points in the park. I really wish we could have spent more time there, but it was BEAUTIFUL!

We get back on the bus to go back to Rippon, and it's only an 8 minute bus ride. We all got off the bus were so miffed. We should have just walked there instead of waiting around town for 2 hours, we could have walked there in a half hour. The bus ride home was uneventful, but we were exhausted at the end of the day from sitting around on buses and trains all day.

Here are the pictures, proof I was there :)