Up till...now :)

Ok, so this post makes me officially caught up!! Aren't we all excited? So, this past week was fairly uneventful...surprise, surprise, but I will tell you about it nonetheless. So, Monday I went to forensics, and we learned some more about crimes scenes and such...good times. I went out to dinner after class with Carly, and had the same thing I always have when I go out, chicken schnitzel and french fries. It is pretty much the best meal ever. No matter what restaurant I go to , I am never disappointed by this choice. After dinner, Carly and I headed back to the dorm. I started to work on my midterm paper for theater class, which was due Wednesday, but I only made it about half-way through. Tuesday, I went to cognition class...lame as always. But, I did finish writing the rest of my midterm paper during it, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. After class I went to The Globe, a bookstore/bar, and started my blogging update hardcore. I was there long enough for happy hour to roll around, and the Globe offers half-off cocktails...so I had a shot called the B52, because it came recommended to me. It has Absinth, Bailey's and Kaluha in it, so I thought it would taste pretty good. They brought it to me with a box of matches, and I was like "whaaaat?" So, I Googled how to drink a B52 (and wikipedia helped too), and supposedly you can drink it flaming if you want to...I did not want to. So, I drank it without the fire, and I have to say, it wasn't as good as I was expecting it to be. My lips were numb for like a minute from the Absinth too...that stuff is hard core. So, check that one off my list as a no-go. After I finished blogging about Liverpool, and finalizing my theater midterm and reflections before I sent them to my professor, I just headed back to my dorm. I completely forgot that it was Tuesday, so I didn't get back to the dorm until around 7:30 p.m. so I completely missed home group. I was really bummed because I slept through church, and then I just completely forgot about home group...not good. So, I spent the rest of the night at the dorm...nothing too exciting. However, this was the first night that I really started to feel sick. Robbie and Kim were both sick in Amsterdam...they had actually been sick for a while before that as well, but it wasn't until after I drank from the same bottle as Robbie that he remembered that he was sick...in fact Kim actually reminded him. However, although I did not continue to drink after either one of them, I wasn't really that concerned because I usually don't get sick like that. In fact, I can't remember the last time I actually got sick because I contracted it from someone. But, Tuesday night...I was like "crap...I think I got the sickness." I was not happy, but I still wasn't convinced it would be all that bad.

Wednesday, I had theater class again. I love theater class. It is my most diverse class in that probably has more international students in it than American students, which I love. Also, there are some kids in it from Britain, and I love British people! Best class ever, actually. After class, I walked across the bridge near our school to a cafe on the other side so that I could continue blogging. It was actually a little cold and cloudy out, so I decided not to go to the park like I usually do. Instead, I decided that I wanted to go see Clash of the Titans. So, after I finished my post, I looked up some movie times. I decided to give myself a little time, so I went to go see the one at 9 p.m. I headed back to the dorm from the cafe, and had about an hour to change into warmer clothes (probably didn't help the sickness that I was underdressed all day) and have something to eat. I headed out to the movie from there. It was a little bit of a let down, actually. Minus the fact that the main character was really attractive, it wasn't as exciting or action-packed as I thought it would be. Not the best action movie I have ever seen, but it wasn't bad. I did enjoy it, I just think that my expectations were a little too high. After the movie I spent the rest of the night in. Thursday, I felt really sick. I woke up for class and couldn't even breathe for like 5 minutes because I was coughing so hard. And since my Thursday class is mainly a walking class, I knew I wasn't going to make it. So, I went back to sleep. I dragged...and I do mean dragged...myself out of bed at around 2 p.m. because I had to go pick up my tickets for the ballet. If you don't pick up your tickets, they subtract the charge from your "cultural events" deposit that you have to make at the beginning of the semester. So, I pulled on some sweats, went to AIFS, picked up my ticket, and then went to a pharmacy to get some medicine, because I was in pretty bad shape...the sickness was vicious. I had enough time to shower before I had to head back out to the ballet. The ballet was actually really good. It not only kept me awake for three hours, but I was thoroughly entertained. Men in tights can do that :) After the play Carly, Stephanie, and I walked to McDonalds and got some ice cream. I love ice cream at night. We got back to the dorm around 11:30 p.m. I was in bed within minutes. I was not feeling well.

Friday and Saturday were probably the least exciting days of the whole week. Friday I only managed to leave the room once...and that was to do laundry. I thought maybe washing the sickness off of my clothes would help...and it did kinda. I did get to skype with Tina and that was fun. It had been a while since we chatted, so she filled me in on some of what had been happening at Tech, and I filled her in a little on some of what I had been up too lately. Then, even more exciting...Stephen joined the world of skype! We didn't get a chance to work out all of the bugs, but we got pretty close. I am sure next time will be a success. After that very stressful day I was wiped...really, I had no energy at all. I curled up in bed at like 8 p.m. with a movie and then went to bed once the movie was over. It was an all-around pretty miserable day for me. Saturday, I was feeling a bit better. I still had my horrible cough, but it wasn't as frequent, and my nausea and headaches had pretty much gone away. I think I even had a fever at one point on Friday. So, since I was feeling a little better, I decided to go out and get some fresh air. I went back to my favorite cafe, updated my blog again and then headed out to my favorite park. I do have to say that the park was absolutely gorgeous! All of the tree are green and in bloom. They have peacocks in the park, and they were all felling good too, so they had their feathers all spread out. The fountain was going, and the best thing was that although a lot of people were there enjoying the sunshine as well, it was so peaceful. No one was being loud or playing games or anything. It was almost silence reverence for the beautiful place we were in. I am going to be really sad to leave this park behind when I come home...I spend a good amount of time there, and it is such a relaxing place to be in that I never want to leave. The sun setting is usually what drives me out. I went back to the dorm, and Kristina (my roommate) and I had a night in watching chick flicks. We watched Confessions of a Shopaholic and Center Stage (a classic). We stayed up kinda late, but those movies were really good.

Today (I know...it is surreal for me too) I got up a little earlier than usual so that I could get some work done before church. I got one of my assignments for the week done...which is good, because I will hardly do any work once my parents get here. I headed out for church as usual, and it was so great. I am sure that I have mentioned before that worship is my favorite part of the service, and today we had the best worship ever. They sang two of my favorite songs of all time, and since I got there a little early I got myself a seat in the back so that I could really just fade into the music and not worry about what was going on around me. It was just phenomenal. After church I went out to dinner with Carly. I hadn't eaten all day up till then, and I was starving. After dinner I came back to my room, watched some Criminal Minds, and then started this post. It takes me at least two hours for every post that I do, and this one was no exception. Blogging is a lot more time consuming that you would think...it probably doesn't help that I am a fairly slow typer. My parents arrive early tomorrow morning, so this will be my last post for at least a couple days...probably till they leave if I am being honest. But, I am really excited for my parents to get here. These past couple of days have been the prettiest days in Prague yet, so they are coming at the perfect time. I am also really excited about Berlin and getting to visit Danja again...it has been too long. That's pretty much it. Well, I am pretty stressed about the amount of work that I have for the end of the semester. I have four papers, two tests, and a presentation still left, and I have no motivation. It is springtime in Prague! So, just pray that I get all of my work done and that I turn in quality work too. That's all for now I believe, stay tuned!!

Amsterdam...and the volcanic interuption

Ok, so I am getting pretty close to being updated, and even if I don't get updated all the way before my parents get here, at least I will have made it pretty far. Also, blogging does give me an excuse if I don't want to go out at night :) But, last weekend I went to Amsterdam, and had a pretty great time, minus the volcanic eruption in Iceland that kinda screwed up the last half of the weekend we were there. So, here goes...

Thursday, Robbie, Kim, and I set out for the Netherlands at the jolly old hour of 8 a.m. We made it through the airport without a hitch, except for security, where I got my lotion taken away...I just can't win with airport security over here. Remember how I said that WizzAir is first come first sever seating, well, Robbie takes that principle very seriously. He was bound and determined to get the first row on the plane because it has more legroom. I was like, whatever. But we positioned ourselves on the shuttle so that we would be the first ones off and thus the first ones on the plane. The funny thing though, was that there was this middle-aged woman who apparently had the same idea as us. The three of us clearly had the advantageous positions on the shuttle, but this woman wasn't giving up so easily. She boarded the plane after Robbie, Kim, and I, and then proceeded to ask the flight attendant to make us move from the front row so that her and her friends could sit there. Ridiculous, right! Of course the flight attendant was like "Sorry ma'am, I can't do that." So, the woman was in a funk for the whole rest of the flight...which I missed most of because I was napping. Next thing I knew, we were in Eindhoven. Eindhoven is where the airport was, but it was still a two hour bus ride to Amsterdam. I slept through a little of the bus ride, but I was really captivated by the scenery. Amsterdam, and its outskirts are just beautiful in the spring. There were flowers growing everywhere, and it was green and lush in the fields. There were canals flowing in and out of all the fields as well. It was just really pretty. So, we arrived in Amsterdam around 3:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon. First thing, we wanted to find our hostel and get checked in. So, we took a 10 minute tram ride from the central station, and then it was about a 15 minute walk from there...but we did walk like 5 minutes in the wrong direction, so we had to backtrack a bit at one point. Eventually we found it, it was pretty discreet looking on the outside. I would have walked right past it if Kim hadn't pointed it out. We were buzzed in...the security was pretty decent here, I have to admit. Then we had to climb the most ridiculous stairs I had ever seen in my whole life, since reception was on the first floor. Something interesting about Amsterdam that is noteworthy, is that back when they were building the city, homeowners and businesses used to be taxed based on how wide the front of their houses or offices were . So the trick was to build narrow houses that were very long, or houses that opened up considerably in the back. Our hostel was a converted "narrow" house. So as a result, the staircase was very narrow and I would say steep, but steep doesn't even begin to cover it. These stairs were maybe 6 inches deep, and at least 10 inches tall. Going up was difficult, but going down was impossible. I literally had to walk down the stairs sideways to keep myself from tumbling headfirst down this mountain. So, we made it reception and then found out that our room was on the third floor, which was really the fourth floor, so we had to climb up three more flights of stairs like the ones we had just climbed...crazy! We dropped of all of our stuff in the room, and now it was like 5 p.m. so we decided to explore a little bit and go check out the floating flower market and then find somewhere to eat dinner. The floating flower market was actually pretty close to our hostel, only about a 15 minute walk. It was really cool, but I think that the season for flowers still wasn't quite there yet, because a lot of the flowers were still just buds. But the flowers that were in bloom were absolutely gorgeous. I wish we had something similar to a flower market in the States, where you can go buy flowers, or flower bulbs, for dirt cheap. I plan to have fresh flowers everywhere in my house when I grow up. Fake plants, but real flowers...I just really love flowers, and I wish it were as convenient to get them in the States as it is in Europe. So, we walked along the flower market for a while, checking out some souvenir shops along the way too. We found a place that we decided to go for dinner, but it still wasn't late enough for dinner yet, so we kept walking. We ran a across a movie theater, and since I love going to the movies, I suggested that we see if anything good was playing, since according to the itinerary that Robbie and Kim had put together, we didn't have anything else to do that night. We were looking at available movies when out of nowhere, this stretch SUV limo pulls up with two guys dressed like the main character of Kick-Ass hanging out of the sun roof. They got out of the limo and were doing flips and stuff and they were making their way to the theater yelling out that everyone should go see Kick-Ass. I turned to Robbie and Kim, and was like "clearly this is a sign that we should go see Kick-Ass." So we decided to go to dinner and then come back and see Kick-Ass afterwards. We had dinner at a nice little place near the floating flower market that had decent prices. One thing I will say about Amsterdam, is that it is a bit pricey in general. We managed to get dinner for about 13 euros, and that's a pretty good deal. Our waiter was very nice, and since we were the only ones in the restaurant for a while we decided to ask him whether we could get a pitcher of Coke. I told you earlier that you don't get free refills in Europe, but we were so thirsty we just decided to see if we could get a pitcher...that way we would all get about two glasses. He was like "I have never really had anyone ask that before, but sure, why not?" So we got a pitcher of Coke with dinner. After dinner we went back to the movie theater to see Kick-Ass. It was a total shocker of a movie...nothing like I expected at all! But in a good way. I didn't expect almost everything that happened, so every ten minutes I was like "what...no way!" It was actually quite an enjoyable movie, and it kept me on my toes. Plus, I am totally in love with the purple wig that the little girl wears...epic! After the movie, we headed back to the hostel, because we were all pretty wiped, and got to bed by like 12:30 a.m. I think. It was a very relaxed and enjoyable first day in Amsterdam.

Friday, we woke up pretty early and headed over to see the Anne Frank house. I actually didn't know that Anne Frank lived in Amsterdam. I always thought that she lived in Germany somewhere, so it really cool to get to see that while we were there. Oh, actually, I was just re-reading my brochure from the house, and she did live in Germany, but her family fled to Amsterdam when Hitler installed an anti-Jewish regime in Germany. You learn something new everyday. :) I think that the Anne Frank house is definitely worth visiting. It was pretty crowded when we were there, but I think that is pretty par for the course. Otto Frank, Anne's father was the only one of the eight in hiding that survived the war. When he came back to Amsterdam, one of his employees that had helped to hide Otto and his family still had in her possession Anne's diary. It took Frank years to read it, but when he finally did, he was surprised at how mature Anne's thought were. She had never really talked about a lot of things that she wrote about in her diary, and Frank realized that the Anne he had known throughout their time in hiding was not the simple little girl that he had thought her to be. One of Anne's desires was to write a book about her time in the Secret Annex. So, Otto had her diary published. The original diary can now be found at the exhibit in Amsterdam. The tour takes you through all of the rooms, including up the staircase hidden by the bookshelf and into the rooms where Anne and her family lived for many months. They even had the windows blacked-out with fabric so it would be just like when Anne and her family lived there. It was really interesting. After Anne Frank's house, we decided to head towards Dam Square for lunch and some souvenir shopping before a tour of the city that we were going on at 1 p.m. It was actually really hard to find souvenirs in Amsterdam that didn't center around weed or the Red Light District. But, we did our best. One thing to note, is that people in the Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular speak really good English...I mean really good English. They even understand slang. It was awesome! Anyway, we went on a three hour tour of Amsterdam that was really great. It was really funny as well as really informative...the best of both worlds. The three hours flew by, and I feel like I got a pretty good feel for the city, and it provoked enough curiosity that if we had had more time there, I definitely would have done more exploring. Some of things we saw on the tour included: The Old Church, the Red Light District, the Dutch East India Company, the Royal Palace (which was under renovations, so there wasn't really much to see), the widest bridge and the smallest house in Amsterdam (there is a picture of me in front of the smallest house on facebook), the Jewish Quarter, and much more. I really enjoyed the tour. However, after the tour, things got a little dicey. It was around 4 p.m. when we first heard about the volcano eruption in Iceland. At first we were like, well it's in Iceland, no worries...but then WizzAir sent us an email saying that all their flights until Saturday morning had been cancelled. And we were like "WHAT!" We were flying out on Sunday morning, but we met a girl from London at our hostel who said that the earliest she was going to be able to fly back to London was Monday morning. Robbie and Kim, bless there hearts, panic very easily. So, they spent like two hours trying to figure out if our flight was going to get cancelled, and if so, how we were going to get back to Prague. It was kind of important that we get back, because Robbie was leaving for Budapest early on Wednesday morning, and I still thought that my parents were going to be getting in to Prague on Monday morning. While they were freaking out, I made friends with several other people from the hostel, and we had a lovely conversation for two hours or so...I really loved the people of Amsterdam too. They were super friendly and very agreeable. So, after a while, we decided to head down to the central station and talk to the people there about possibly getting a train ticket back to Prague. We weren't allowed in the building! There was already a three hour line for international train tickets, and they weren't letting anyone else in that day. So I asked what time we should come back the next day. The man told me that they were going to open at six, but that I should be there by 5:15 a.m. or so, because there would probably be a line already. We were like, great, we might actually get stuck in Amsterdam. So, we went back to the same place for dinner and talked about what we were going to do. Based on what we had already seen and heard, we were thinking that it was going to be pretty possible that our flight would get cancelled. So we decided after dinner we would go back to the hostel and try to book the tickets online, because we didn't want to risk them being sold out at the station, and they always leave a certain number open for sale online anyway. We spent like another hour once we were back at the hostel trying to find a train that hadn't already been sold out. Eventually we found a train with available seats, but the prices had been jacked way up...all the prices had been. We heard all kinds of crazy stories about people paying upwards of 800 euro just to rent a car for the day! It was ridiculous how much price gouging was going on. We managed to pay somewhat reasonable prices, although they were about three times the amount of the original ticket. I think we managed to book like the last three tickets on the train too, because we had a friend in Amsterdam, who was staying with some friends, and she tried to book tickets like 8 hours later...and the next available train didn't leave until Wednesday. So, that took up most of our night on Friday, and instead of leaving Sunday morning, we were now leaving on Saturday at 7 p.m.

So, we had to cut some things out of our itinerary since we had less time in Amsterdam than we thought we would have. Also, after having to pay for a pretty expensive train ticket back to Prague, we were trying to keep things as cheap as possible. So, Saturday morning, we packed up most of our stuff and then went to breakfast with the British girl that I met at the hostel earlier the day before. She was really funny, and I wish that we had been able to hang out with her more. But after a delicious breakfast of Dutch style pancakes (which were amazing!) we headed out to take a canal tour through Amsterdam. Although we had already seen a good bit of the city, the canal cruise was something you just can't pass up when in Amsterdam...plus, we got to see the only windmill in Amsterdam proper! Totally worth it. On our canal tour, we met several couples from the States who were just cruising the canals all day because their flights had been delayed for several days at least. We realized how lucky we were that we were going somewhere that could be reached by train, and that we had been able to get train tickets at all...God definitely heard my prayers. We got off the canal tour in a couple of places and took some pictures. We were going to go the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, but we didn't have enough time. I was really kind of bummed, because it is supposed to be a really cool museum, and it has the largest collection of Van Gogh paintings in the world. But, we explored the area around the museum extensively, and took some pictures with the really large I AMSTERDAM sign that is near the museum (those pictures can also be found on facebook). Then we had to head back to our hostel to finish packing up our stuff, check out, and get to the central station. We wanted to get there about an hour early too, just in case anything happened. Our train got there a little early, so it was good that we were ready. Robbie, Kim, and I were all in different compartments, but the compartments were all right next to each other, so it wasn't that bad. The bad news is that we had a 14 hour (which ended being 15 1/2) train ride ahead of us, and we were not in a sleeper car. Let me tell you something, if you ever take a night train that is longer than 6 hours or so...pay the money for the sleeper car. Even if it is twice as expensive...you won't regret it, I promise! Those fifteen hours were miserable. I won't bore you with the details, but I never want to take a train ride like that again. Nobody in my compartment spoke English...although they tried, and, I was sore in places that I didn't even know could get sore. I woke up every hour on the hour because I was in physical pain from trying to fall asleep in those seats. They were less comfortable than airplane seats, and you had to keep your feet to yourself because there were people sitting across from you. It was rough, but we made it! We arrived Sunday morning in Prague. And I was so tired! I was set my alarm to get up and go to church after a long nap (cause church doesn't start till 4:30 p.m. :) ), and I woke up three hours after my alarm was supposed to have gone off. I slept through my snooze for three hours, that's how tired I was! I was kind of bummed though, because I was really excited about being back in time to go to church. But, I pretty much ate dinner and went back to bed.

So, that pretty much sums up Amsterdam. It wasn't filled with smoking weed or partying in the Red Light District, which the majority of stories consist of. It was my ideal weekend trip. Walk around, take some tours, visit a museum or two, and just hang out in an amazing city. I really loved Amsterdam, and when I come back to Europe, I am definitely going to try and have an extended stay there. It was gorgeous, the people were amazing, and the food was great...what more could you ask for?? This past week will be a pretty quick post, and then I will put up a more though provoking one hopefully tomorrow. That's the plan anyway. So, stay tuned!!

The 12-14th...or those incredibly busy days leading up to Amsterdam

Ok, so as lame as this may sound, I think the only motivation I had for updating today was because I needed something to do while Glee was loading. And for those of you who may not be familiar with Glee, in all of its glory, it is, by far, the best new show on television! You absolutely have to check it out if you are not already familiar with it, and I suggest starting at the beginning, otherwise you won't understand character development.

Anyway, getting on to the more important and newsworthy items, I will commence with the updating starting last Monday. So, I woke up earlier than usual again last Monday so that Carly and I could go over our presentation on psychopaths one more time before class. Class went over without a hitch...same old, same old you know, and I think we did pretty well on our presentation as well. Immediately after class, I headed over to the soccer stadium to catch a Sparta (yes, I know, the most epic team name ever) soccer game. The good news was that our seats were really close to the action, the bad news is that it was raining and our seats were not located under an overhang. After a sad attempt at playing soccer in highschool, during which I learned that I have negative eye-foot coordination skills, I developed a new-found appreciation for the sport. So, I enjoyed watching the game, even though it was in the rain. I also have to say that I enjoyed watching the soccer players in the rain...and I feel that no further explanation is needed on that point :) I had to leave the soccer game early (but don't worry, we won) in order to go to another performance for my theater class. Since I had to walk a considerable distance in the rain, and sat through half of a soccer game in the rain, I arrived thoroughly soaked. The performance in and of itself was ok, but compared to the horrible show I saw the night before, it was amazing. But, I was kinda miserable through the whole show cause I was wet, and then I got cold...no fun.

Tuesday, I didn't go to class because I had too much to do before Amsterdam, and not enough time in which to do it. So, I stayed home and did a bunch a work for that week and the next week, cause at this point I still thought my parents were coming after I got back from Amsterdam. I wrote several reflections, did laundry, went and printed out all of my travel information from AIFS, and then I went to home group. Several of the regulars weren't there, but I did get to meet some guys from North Carolina! There were three of them, and two of them were twins (so cool!), and they were all recently graduated from NC State and they were part of a program where they travel all around Europe, and every week they will link up to a classroom of third and fourth graders back in the States and tell them all the things they are learning about the new countries that they are in. I don't know if they were getting paid for it or anything, but it sounded like a really cool way to see Europe after college. They were couchsurfing at Joe's house, but they also seemed like they were pretty solid Christians. It was really cool to get a little taste of home :) After home group was over, I headed back to the dorm and spent the rest of the night in.

Wednesday, I didn't have class, and that was probably a good thing because I still had so much to do. I did sleep in a little, so I got up around 11 a.m. and got ready for the day. I went into the AIFS office and printed out an application to work in the Education Abroad office next year at Virginia Tech. I filled it out, attached my essay, and then faxed it to the office just in time to leave for my next event. I was going on what we call "cafe outings." Marketa, the program director for AIFS in Prague, takes students who are interested to a local cafe for coffee and cake about every three weeks. It is a cultural event, so AIFS pays for it, and while we are there we can talk to Marketa about anything we like or dislike about our stay, we can ask her questions, or we can just talk about the weather. It is just her way to get to spend a little time with us since she doesn't go on any of our regular outings. This cafe outing was a little different though. With this outing we got a free tour of the Lobkowicz Palace museum, which is the largest, oldest, and most intact private collection in the Czech Republic. The Lobkowicz family still exists today, and they have graciously donated a lot of their family's extensive collection on music, art, hunting, furniture, and everyday things to this special exhibit. Current members of the family actually guide you through the exhibit via the audiotour...and that was pretty cool! It was by far one of my favorite things that I have done in Prague. The Lobkowicz were huge supporters of Mozart and Beethoven, and Beethoven's 5th is one of a number of pieces that was dedicated to the Lobkowicz's. They have the original score, written in Beethoven's own hand in the exhibit! I am definitely taking my parents there. So after we had coffee and cake at the cafe there, we got to go through the exhibit. Then right from there Robbie, Carly, and I went to grab some dinner. We ate at a restaurant called Trilobite, and being a former geology major, I thought that was so great. We had to eat pretty quick because we had to go to the opera at 7 p.m. We went to see Don Giovanni. Now, I know that this is a really famous opera, but I have to say that out of the operas that I have seen so far, this one was probably my least favorite. I just didn't really connect with the characters and their plights. I think that their could have been more emotion than there was. But, it was a good performance nonetheless.

We didn't get out of the opera until 10 p.m. and we all had to go back and pack for Amsterdam, because of course, none of us had done that yet. So, I got back to my room, packed for Amsterdam, which took me about an hour or so, because I was also cleaning up before I left. I hate coming back to a dirty room after a trip, so I always have to clean everything right before I go somewhere. I got to bed around 12:30 a.m., which wasn't too bad, I thought. The next morning we left, but I will save Amsterdam stories until the next post. I am getting really close to being caught up. I think three more posts will do it :) But technically one of those posts won't be chronological. So, really it's more like two "time" posts and a "thought" post. And I have two days before my parents get here, so I think I can get it all done.

Stay tuned, and pray that I feel better by the time my parents get here, because I have been sick as a dog the past couple of days. Later!

The in-between

See, I told you I would be back soon. However, this post won't be quite as interesting as the last one because it's just going to cover the week and weekend following Liverpool, during which nothing really all that exciting happened. So, here we go.

As I already mentioned we got back from Liverpool on Tuesday with just enough time to get to class. So I went to class and managed to fall asleep multiple times throughout it because I was so tired. I went back to my room, and instead of taking a nap I had to do some homework, as well as email the hostel we had stayed in because I lost my camera on the trip. Well, I say lost, but I don't really ever misplace things, so I think that someone made away with it at some point during the trip. I really wish that people who stole cameras would at least be kind enough to leave the memory cards behind. Cameras are replaceable, but pictures are not, and I lost a lot of pictures that I hadn't been able to upload yet...particularly Vienna pictures. I was pretty upset. So, the last half of my trip won't be as documented as the first half. Although a couple of people have been really gracious to let me come sift through their pictures and pick out some ones that I would like to have. And there is always facebook, so I think I am covered. Anyway, getting back on track. Wednesday I also had class, and then after class I can't really remember doing anything so I probably just went back to my room and hung out there for the rest of the night. I might have gone to the supermarket. I wouldn't have had any food since I took a lot of it with me on my trip cause it would have gone bad otherwise. Thursday I had class again (Art & Architecture), and we went on kind of a "summary" walk around Prague, reflecting on some of the architectural styles that we had been learning about. After class was over, and we ended the walk on Charles Bridge, I walked to the closet metro station and on the way discovered a really awesome park that I think I mentioned somewhere a bit earlier. It was really gorgeous, and so I made a mental note to go back there at one point and do some reading or something outside...since the weather is starting to get really nice, and more importantly, stay that way. I took the metro back to the dorm, grabbed my computer and a book, and headed back out to do some blogging and catch up on some reading. So, I spent the majority of Thursday afternoon blogging about Vienna in a cafe and then reading outside in a beautiful park...very European :) My roommate had a friend arrive on Thursday to visit her, and she stayed with us over the weekend. Her name was also Jessica, so it made for an interesting weekend. :)

To be honest, nothing really that exciting happened over the weekend. After Liverpool, I just wanted some down time to chill out and relax. That being the case, I spent the rest of the weekend avoiding going out. I spent most of Friday doing nothing in particular, and then Friday night that I just went in and sat in Robbie and Vaughn's room and hid so that I wouldn't get talked into going out. I usually pride myself on being pretty resilient to the urgings of others once I have made up my mind about something, but the girls here have some kind of super power that gets inside my head. Nine times out of ten I will get talked into going out, and it is becoming a problem. So, I knew I just needed to avoid them until they left. Robbie and Vaughn weren't doing anything that night either, so I just went and hung out with them, and we had a really good time just talking about life in general until about 1 a.m. Then I went safely back to my room and went to bed. On Saturday, I again didn't really do anything to exciting. I did a little more blogging during that day, as well as some homework that I was trying to get out of the way before the next week, which was actually quite busy. I did have dinner with Robbie and Vaughn at a Mexican place that they had heard was pretty good. I though it was actually really good, but also pretty expensive. We walked around town for a little bit after that and then headed back to the dorm for the night. Sunday I woke up a bit earlier than usual because Carly and I had to work on our presentation on psychopathic personalities which we had to present on Monday. We used it as an excuse to watch a little bit of criminal minds as well...I mean who wouldn't :) Then I headed out to church. I have to say I don't get to church as often as I would like to because I travel a lot on the weekends, but on the weekends that I do get to go it is usually the highlight of that weekend. I really like going to this church because they usually have pretty good worship, and this Sunday was no exception. I can't remember if I mentioned this in an earlier post, but I found out that Chris is a fantastic guitar player...and I mean really, really good. He demonstrated his Spanish guitar repertoire for us one Tuesday night at home group, and I couldn't believe how good he was. Not to mention he fact that he has a phenomenal singing voice. So, this Sunday he was actually leading worship and singing a lot of songs that I am familiar with from back in the States, and it was just a really good worship time for me. I had to rush from church though to make a performance for my theater class. Which started like 30 minutes after church ended, and I had to find it as well, so I was a bit rushed. The performance was called Pixy, and it was probably the worst performance I have ever seen. I really didn't have anything positive to say about it afterwards, but half of that could be because I didn't understand what happened after the first 15 minutes of the show. After the show a couple of us from the class who went to go see it went to a nearby bar and we were like, "what the heck just happened?" There was in our group a girl that spoke Czech, and she pretty much explained that whole thing to us, at which point we were like...well, if it is possible, the show just became even weirder. But then we moved on from the play and began to talk about different places in America and Europe because there were three Americans (including me), a girl from the Czech Republic, a girl from Italy, and a girl from Greece who were all there. It was really cool to be a part of such an international exchange, and I hadn't really thought about it up until that point, but I actually hang out with a lot of international students besides Czech students. I am growing to absolutely love how diverse the countries are in Europe. I love meeting someone from England in a hostel, getting breakfast with them in the morning, and then having dinner with a polish guy you met in a museum later that same day. It is a really cool thing. So, I hung out with these girls until like 11 p.m. and then I went home and went to bed...essentially.

Well, I think I covered just about everything I did in the last week and a half minus things like watching cartoons online on Saturday morning, because I am pretty sure no one cares at all about stuff like that. As you can see, it was really a pretty chill week and weekend, and those are my favorite kinds :) The next few days, though, before we left for Amsterdam were crazy-busy however. So I will talk about them tomorrow. Again, I haven't mentioned this in a while, but if you have anything in specific you want me to mention or talk about, or you have questions about anything I have already talked about...feel free to leave a comment or question as feedback...I love feedback! :)

Stay tuned...

LIVERPOOL!

I feel the need to profusely apologize for not updating this sooner. SO, seeing as my parents were delayed for a week, it seems that God has given me a whole week with nothing planned in order that I might finally get up to date on this thing. Also, I have been thinking lately that I haven't been spending enough time writing about how my time abroad has been influencing my thoughts and attitudes about the world and the people in it. So, sometime this week, I am going to devote a post to describing some of that. But in the meantime, I need to get up to date on my recent activities. So in this post I will try to get through Liverpool and the following week, which I can't really remember now anyway...oops :)

Ok, so I left off right before we left for Liverpool. So you know by now that Liverpool was a pretty spontaneous trip...I decided to go about three days before we actually left. I decided to go because, and don't judge, because I think that British accents are like the sexiest thing on the whole planet (right up there with Australian and Irish accents). So, it was like impossible for me to pass up this trip. For those of you who, like me, might not know much about Liverpool, I will give you a couple of historical nuggets of knowledge that you can pass along to your friends. Liverpool is the original home of the Beatles, it was a major port used in slave trade routes, and it is located in the Northwest corner of the UK, really close to Ireland. That about sums up Liverpool. However, what made Liverpool one of the craziest weekends ever was the nightlife...but we will get to that later. First I want to tell you about what we saw there, so you will know that we did do some legitimate touring while we were there.

So, we left the dorm at 4:30 a.m. the Saturday of Easter weekend. We took a taxi to the airport, since nothing else on wheels runs that early in the morning. And the funs starts here. Most of the traveling outside of what AIFS already had planned for us is cheapest if you fly. There are several intercontinental airlines that will fly you anywhere in Europe for around $90 roundtrip...it is a great deal. However, for $90, you don't check your bags, it is first come first serve seating, and nothing is complementary. My personal favorite is an airline called WizzAir...whose company colors are pink and purple...even at 5:30 in the morning that cracks me up! The first sign that this was going to be an interesting trip happened going through security. It slipped my mind that I wasn't going to be checking my bag, so I brought all of my liquids. The young man working on the line asked me to open my bag...so I did. He pulled out my liquids traveling case, and with it all of my "unmentionables." There were my underwear and bras all over the conveyor belt. It gets better. The young man goes in to pick them up and put them back in my bag, realizes what actually fell out, and at this point must have had a mental conversation in his head about what to do next, because he like froze for 5 seconds just staring at them. My friends are laughing hysterically in the background...good. So, only having been awake for like an hour and still not fully aware of how embarrassing this situation actually is, I just scooped up all my clothes and said, "Well, this is kind of awkward." At which point the security man turns bright red. He then proceeds to confiscate almost everything I brought with me...shampoo, conditioner, face wash, etc. He did leave me with much more than 3 ounces though. I got all of my lotion and contact solution returned, but I think that was just because he felt really embarrassed. A great start to any trip if you ask me. We then had to walk to the farthest gate in the farthest terminal because WizzAir is like the "special" airline that they only let fly early in the morning before all the legitimate airlines arrive. Anyway, since it is first come first serve seating, there is usually kinda a subtle "fight to the death" mentality among passengers. There is a shuttle that takes you out to the plane (you board using stairs out on the tarmac), and if you are in the advantageous position of being closest to the doors of the shuttle so that you be the first to exit, then you very quickly become aware of your lack of a personal space bubble. On this particular trip I was somewhere in the middle of the shuttle, so I didn't have to worry about being "accidentally" tripped. I was instead in the very center of the shuttle where there is nothing to grab onto as our driver tries to break the sound barrier on our way to our plane. Being the charismatic charmer that I am, I quickly made friends with a group of native Liverpoolers (??) talking about how funny it was that we all didn't have anything to hold on to, and then asserting it wouldn't be that big of a deal...we could just pretend that we were surfing. You can see where this is going. Our driver revs the engine like he is in some sort of sunrise derby, and before I knew it, my friendship with the Liverpoolers became a lot more intimate in a matter of seconds. We all fell on top of each other (not my travelling companions however, they managed to just laugh hysterically...again... while all of this was going on) in the middle of the bus. So recap...underwear on the conveyor belt, embarrassed security guard, and then in the middle of a pile of bodies on the floor of the airport shuttle. All before six in the morning on the first day of the trip...awesome.

So, we got on the plane and flew to Liverpool uneventfully, I mean I slept through most of the flight, so it was uneventful for me. When we arrived in Liverpool, we immediately wanted to find our hotel for the first night, because we wanted a nap. So we found one of those information booths at the...wait for it...John Lennon Airport, and got ourselves a free taxi to the hotel (the first of many free things in Liverpool) However, we could not find the pick-up point. We had to go back to that information desk like three times to get it right. We finally reached our hotel around 10:30 a.m. We stayed in the hotel the first night because the hostel was full, but we stayed in a hostel for the other two nights. The first thing we did in the hotel was eat breakfast. They had a really awesome continental breakfast, and we took full advantage of it. Then we walked to a nearby supermarket and got some drinks for later that night. While we were over there, we spotted a Pizza Hut and by unanimous vote came back after our nap for dinner. I enjoyed that meal more than I have enjoyed a meal in a long time for one reason...FREE REFILLS!!!! If I could go back in time, I would personally thank the man who decided that free refills should be implemented. I miss them so much!! I will never take free refills for granted again. After dinner and a little drinking we tried to figure out how to get downtown to check out the local nightlife. We found a nearby bus stop and when the next bus came by we asked which bus we should get on to find this street we were looking for, and how much the bus ticket would be. He told we could get on his bus and he would drop us off where we wanted to go, and he only charged us like 1/3 of the cost of a real ticket cause he said we should save our money for drinks downtown...lol. So, on our double-decker bus ride we saw that Liverpool is kinda like a rundown and older version of London...kinda like the ghetto in London. We were a little concerned. But it turned out not to be a big deal at all. It just simply looked creep at night. Our bus driver pulls up to a non-sanctioned stop and calls back to us telling us that this is where we should get off if we want to see the nightlife of Liverpool. We were like...well ok. So we got off and the next 10 minutes we spent going, "did you see that..." "what the..." "oh my gosh..." "where exactly are we again..." This place was unlike anything I have ever seen. It was just flat out ridiculous. Long story short, it was a pretty crazy night.

The next morning, we woke up around 10 a.m. and headed out for a little sightseeing. First though we transferred all of our stuff to the hostel. We saw the largest Anglican cathedral in the world, with the coolest cemetery ever attached to it, as well as a really modern Catholic church that has the largest stained glass window in the world. Then we walked down to Albert Dock, which was the major dock that was a part of the slave trade routes. Now it has souvenir shops and such. We did a little shopping and then headed back to the hostel for a nap. After the nap we went out again that night. Since the next day was a holiday we were told that everyone would be out and about that night, and sure enough they were. Our second night out was even more insane than the first night. We met up with some British guys from our hostel when we were out, and we hung out with them for a good portion of the night. When we got back to the hostel later that night I passed out I was so tired. I didn't wake up until our Chinese roommate started snoring at full volume. Several hours passed like this, with me counting off reasons in my head why it would not be ok to suffocate him with his own pillow. They left early the next morning though, and for the rest of the trip we had the room to ourselves. Monday, we hit up the World Museum they had there, and it was actually a really lame museum. It was a lot more like hands-on stuff for kids, and less actual exhibits to go through and glean knowledge from. From there we went to Albert Dock again to go on a Beatles tour, but we decided to pass on that because none of us were huge Beatles fans and it was like a $20 tour. We found Drury Lane, the infamous home of the Muffin Man...and don't worry, this spectacular event was indeed documented. We had some fish and chips for dinner, and then headed back to the hostel to nap and pack up our things for our early flight the next morning. That night, we went out to the Cavern Club for a sober night of good music. The Cavern Club is a popular establishment where the Beatles played a lot...it was where they were first discovered I believe. There was a guy there playing some really good music, and it was probably my favorite night out. This guy was a regular there, and he was really good. We did meet some locals on our way back that night who apparently think that Americans are the greatest thing since sliced bread, cause they were making a scene. They just couldn't believe that they would have the good fortune of finding Americans on holiday in Liverpool. It was really kinda awesome actually...you don't meet to many people over here who think that Americans are that cool.

The next morning we woke up early again and got on our flight back to Prague. Nothing too exciting happened this time. Although I did meet a British man in the row in front of us who was a Christian counselor. He studied at some seminary in Colorado for four years, and then lived there for a couple more years after that. He decided after being a pastor there for a couple of years that he wanted to invest more in counseling than pastoring. So he was moving back to England to be a trauma counselor. We talked for a bit and then I was so tired I had to excuse myself to sleep for the rest of the flight. We got back to our dorm in Prague with 8 minutes to spare before we had to turn around and head out to go to class (my class on Monday was cancelled because of Easter). I slept the rest of the day after I got back from class. :) So that pretty much sums up...leaving out some stories from our time downtown, my exciting weekend in Liverpool. I will say this though...as fun as that weekend was, I have not gone out since, and I don't think that I will go out for the rest of my time in Prague. Now that I know you are so curious about what happened that you are about to explode, I am going to sign off because this stupid post took me like two and a half hours to write. Tomorrow I am going to go to another cafe and update again, so stay tuned for real this time... :)

Alright, here comes a little more

Ok, so now that I have Vienna out of the way, I will move on to the following week. The Monday after we got back I had a midterm in Forensics. It was only seven question long, but it was kinda all over the place concerning what we had been learning about. I did pretty well on it considering I didn't really have much of a chance to study...I ended up with a B+. I was pretty happy, and I think I did better than most. Tuesday I went to my least favorite class ever and suffered through the grueling 3 hour lecture. However, one of the girls that I go to class with asked me if I was interested in going to Liverpool, UK. I asked her when, and she said this coming Saturday, and we will stay until Tuesday morning...just in time to make it back for this horrible class next week...yay. So, I asked for some of the details, and then I was like what the heck you only live once...so I decided to go. So, the rest of Tuesday and some of Wednesday was spent booking the hostel and the flight and all the jazz. I didn't have class on Wednesday, so I went out and did a little shopping for my roommates, and had a crepe at the Easter Fair..all in all a very laid back and relaxing day. During this whole week my roommate's family was here, and so I got to meet all of them. Wednesday night, my roommate wanted to take her older brother out with us, so we all went out to a club, but we didn't stay long...the music wasn't very good. But, I hung out with Kristina's (my roommate) brother, and he was totally opposite from Kristina, so we got along swimmingly while he was here. Thursday morning I went to class, and then spent most of the rest of the day doing laundry before Liverpool. I also went to see the Lovely Bones Thursday night, which turned out to be a really good movie, better than I thought it would be. Friday was really chill, cause I knew I ad to get up at 4:30 a.m. the next day for Liverpool. I am never going to be able to adjust back to regular school life after being here...I essentially have more free time than I do in the summer...minus the reflection I have right now and then for class. It is going to be a shock when I have to start writing my end of the semester papers...I won't remember how to write a good paper. I'm concerned. Anyway, it was a pretty uneventful week followed by the craziest weekend ever.

I will post about Liverpool soon, and get the next week taken care of before I head off to Amsterdam next weekend. I will...I will not be behind again...hopefully.

Stay tuned!

Wow....where to begin!

SOOOO...it has been a while folks, and I have a lot to cover. So hang on to your seats, cause it's going to be a long ride! As far as I can tell, I left off right before Vienna so I will pick it up Friday morning for our departure.

We departed for our 5-6 hour bus ride to Vienna around 9 a.m. As bus rides go it was very uneventful until we were about a hour and a half from Vienna. I was napping at this point, and I woke up to Jana telling us that we would be stopping for about 20 minutes. I heard these gasps of disbelief followed by laughter, and I wasn't sure what everyone was making a big fuss about. Then, I turned to look out the window, and I saw it...Excalibur. As we pulled into a parking lot guarded by statues of knights on horseback I saw them...the dragons! Everywhere I looked huge dragons were lurking about. On top of buildings, on lamp posts, on the ground, it was incredible! At this point, I would have been content to just not go to Vienna and spend my weekend here. Because, on top of the amazing medieval theme, there was also the Great Wall of China surrounding a would-be Asian market, a jet plane converted into a restaurant, bumper cars, and a supermarket that sold chocolate covered animal crackers. Does life get any better?? I think not. You know, I have seen so many dragons over here that I am actually beginning to think that I might see a real one before I leave. It is very exciting to think about! So, after twenty amazing minutes, I unfortunately had to get back on the bus to complete our trek to Vienna. However, we were promised that we would stop at Excalibur again on our return trip. So, we arrived in Vienna around four in the afternoon, and we went through the same old routine of checking into our hotel and then meeting an hour later to go into the city center. I was rooming with Carly for our time in Vienna, and I really enjoyed getting to spend some one on one time with her cause she is pretty great. So, it took about 25 minutes to walk to the city center, and throughout the whole walk I was like "Why didn't I come study here?" Vienna is absolutely gorgeous! I am definitely going to make an effort to visit it again the next time I am in Europe. It is a large city, but it just has this feeling about it. I never felt overwhelmed by the size of the city, nor did I ever tire of seeing what was around the next corner. It also had a lot of beautiful parks and lawns where the people gathered to hang out, kick around a soccer ball, or just stroll around. And since the weather was really nice, there were tons of people just out enjoying the sunshine. I just immediately fell in love with the city. So, we reached the city center, which (and Stephen, you will love this) is called Stephen's Square because of the church, Stephansdom (which is in the middle of the square), which is named after the patron saint of Vienna, St. Stephen. Yeah, I know, it seemed like a little much to me too. :) Needless to say, we heard a lot about St. Stephen during that weekend. Carly and I decided to walk around and look for a cheap place to eat. We found pizza that was really cheap, and no joke, the portion size was about half of a pizza...Vienna just kept getting better! We decided to walk along one of the rivers and just see what we could see. We ended up talking about psychopaths, personalities, guys, and Criminal Minds...all in all some of my favorite things to talk about. We saw a ferris wheel in the distance and thought we would check it out. Long story short, we walked like 10 blocks past where the ferris wheel was, and by this point it was completely dark outside. So, we backtracked and managed to find it without getting lost again. What we didn't know, was that the ferris wheel was a part of the coolest amusement park of all time! It was like a county fair from the movies, only better! There was even cotton candy! So, Carly and I went on three rides...cause it was really all we had money for. We went on a Jurassic Park "ride," the ferris wheel, and a roller coaster. Keep in mind, that we are completely sober, and that we don't have any adult supervision. We were out of control :) The Jurassic park "ride" was unlike anything I have ever experienced. It was like a hybrid, cause it was half ride and half walking...kinda weird, but totally awesome. And, I must say that it did legitimately scare me once or twice, provoking some very embarrassing blood-curling screams. Good times. So Carly and I, now high on adrenaline went in search of the ferris wheel in order to bring our heart rates back down to a non-fatal range. However, the ferris wheel turned out to be almost as much of an adventure as the dinosaurs. We were in one of two pods that had people in them, so we pretty much had the ride to ourselves. We took the opportunity to take a video of the whole amusement park in all of its awesomeness. Then, on our last time around, the guy in charge of helping us on and off of the ferris wheel must have felt particularly cheeky, cause he grabbed the side of our pod and spun it as hard as he could. I almost peed in my pants. We were screaming and laughing at the same time, and he just thought we were the greatest thing since sliced bread, cause he laughed as much as we did. After disembarking from another great ride, we made our way to the roller coaster we had picked out, and since it was pretty late in the evening...probably around 9:00 p.m....we had the whole ride to ourselves. So, naturally we rode in the front row and screamed the whole time. It was such an amazing adventure! I would have gone there all the time if I had studied in Vienna...seriously. Then, we headed back to our hotel cause we had to get ready to go out that night for Robbie's birthday. So, we had about an hour in our hotel room, during which I quoted the third LOTR movie to Carly and a couple others. It was pretty epic. Then, we headed out to find this club that someone had recommended that we go to. However, some people didn't want to pay for the metro, so being a natural middleman, I tried to find a way for people to get to the club if they wanted to walk. What this turned into was me leading the group of people who wanted to walk...even though I really wanted to take the metro. About an hour later, after asking directions several times, we found the club. I was so tired at this point that I just wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep. But I had promised Robbie that I would come out at least for little bit, and I wanted him to enjoy his birthday, so I stayed...but not for long. The club that we were supposed to go to charged a really big cover charge, so we went to the one next door instead. I think that most people did this, because the second club was PACKED! I was getting legitimately angry at how obnoxious the people were too. I told Robbie that if I didn't leave I might have started a bar fight...no joke. So, I had to walk an hour back to the hotel, and didn't get back until like 2 a.m., when I had planned to be in bed by like 12:30 a.m. Good. And, thus ends the first day in Vienna. I am telling you, it was out of control!

Saturday, started off with not being able to walk to the bathroom in the morning because my feet hurt so bad from all the walking the day before. The really good news though was that all we had planned for the day were walking tours...awesome. So, Z and Jana led us around the city and took us to see some of the major sights in Vienna. Besides my feet, it was actually a really fun time. I have really started to get to know some of the other kids, and it makes the trips a lot more fun. Carly and I opted out of the second walking tour later in the day because Z said we would have had to walk about 45 minutes to even get to the place we were going to see...and I just laughed. So instead we went back to the hotel and had a nap, a glorious nap. We woke up about 2 hours later, and decided to go see the Imperial Jewels exhibit. It was a little less jewels, and a little more just stuff that the royal family had at some point or another. It was cool, but I think maybe another exhibit would have been more worthwhile. Then we walked over to see the Lipizzaner stallions. They weren't performing or anything, but we got to see them in their stalls...plus I have already seen them perform...a long time ago, I can't even remember where I saw them, but it was random. Then Carly and I met up with some other people and had dinner near the hotel. The food at the restaurant was really good, but it came in huge portions! I ordered a fried chicken breast and some fries, and what I got was a whole chicken and a potato farm. I mean it was actually kind of obnoxious how much food they served us. I ate until I thought I was going to be sick, and I had only eaten about half of what was on my plate. We all quickly slipped into food comas, and decided to just go back to the hotel and call it a night early.

Sunday was daylight savings for us, and only about four people remembered. So, we were a little late getting checked out of the hotel and on our way to the two other stops planned before heading back to Prague. Our first stop was simply a photo op. We saw a really cool contemporarily designed house which was really interesting. It has no windows that are the some dimensions, and it has over 40 different types of plants growing from the inside out. We spent about 15 minutes there taking pictures, and then we headed to the summer palace where we spent about 3 hours. Robbie, Vaughn, Brigitte, and I went on a tour of the inside of the palace and then walked around in the gardens outside, cause the weather was awesome. It was really beautiful palace, and I definitely could have spent more time there. But we had to get back on the bus to make it back to Prague by dinner time.

That pretty much sums up Vienna, and I would have told you more specifically about the places that I we saw on our tours, but I am in a cafe right now and I don't have the itinerary with me. Also, I don't have any pictures of Vienna either because my camera was stolen before I could upload any of them. Don't worry though, I am getting pictures from some friends, so I will have some soon. And then I will give you a more detailed account of what we saw. I don't want to make the post much longer, so I will wait to tell you all about the next week and Liverpool till the next post, which I might do later this evening. Right now, I am going to go read a book outside in the sunshine on this gorgeous day here in Prague. I discovered the most beautiful and quiet park earlier today, and so I am going to go try it out as a reading spot...wish me luck! Stay tuned!!