I've been slacking on the blogging!

We've been staying busy so it's been hard to find the time and energy to write a blog lately! Anyway-since my last post we spent 2 more days in York then traveled back to London.

On Friday we had a tour of York Minster, which is a huge old cathedral right in the heart of York. We were there for a few hours with a great tour guide who told us all of the history of the minster which gave us a lot of information on the formation of York itself, from when the Romans were there through the present day. The architecture and history (several fires, changing of the official religion of England, etc) were really fascinating and they had a cool exhibit in the undercroft with a lot of old foundation and structure as well as things that had been historically used in the minster. It is a church with one of the largest amounts of stained glass in the world which was beautiful. We spent the afternoon shopping and relaxing then that night saw a pantomime of Humpty Dumpty. A panto is a british Christmas tradition and they take a childrens story or fairy tale with huge amounts of comedy and audience participation-cheering for the hero and booing the villain. There was singing and dancing (a particular favorite was the entire cast dancing to their rendition of Beyonce's Single Ladies, we were in absolute stitches) and it was pure fun. After a pint at a pub we headed back to the hotel.

The next day we drove to Fountains Abbey which is a magnificent ruin of a monestary/abbey that was founded in 1132 and then was destroyed by Henry VIII in 1539. The ruins that are there are breathtaking and despite the really crappy weather it was so cool to see. When we came back we relaxed and shopped a little more (York is a very cool town) then I met up with a friend I know from the eventing scene who is here doing her masters. Dani took me for traditional English tea then gave me a tour of a lot of the city-since she's doing her masters in Medieval Archeology it was like having my very own tour guide which was awesome! Then we ran into a few of my friends and went to dinner at a pub before saying goodbye to Dani and heading to bed at a decent hour to get up early the next day to drive back to London.

More to come later!

the past few days!

(So I wrote this post last night and it was being slow uploading the pictures so i gave up and went to bed)

'ello everyone!

It's been a fun few days since I posted! The day after we

got back from Bath, Salisbury Cathedral, and Stonehenge we once again had class in the morning. Then we came back to the hotel, did a little bit of writing for our critical responses and then headed over to the British Museum. That is one cool museum. We started in the Egyptian sculpture and architecture, did Greek sculpture, then went upstairs to the Egyptian mummies and stuff. I spent a lot of time in that area-it was really interesting I've not seen that kind of stuff since I was too young to really remember it well or understand all of the signs on the exhibits. The museum is absolutely beautiful, it is a roman style building that you step into what used to be the exterior but they closed in quite a while back (I described that really poorly-but I have pictures). One of the most amazing things about it is that it has been around for hundreds of years. The British are very devoted to their history. You can be walking around london and seeing more modern buildings, ones from the earlier 1900s, and then all of a sudden you come across this amazing building that's been there for hundreds of years. It is so eclectic but really paints a picture of the transformations that this country went through.

After the museum we headed to the national theater a few hours before our show and had an awesome tour of the entire facility. In England people go to the theater like we go to movies so the national theater has 3 theaters in it and they do their shows "in rep" so there are at least 2 shows rotating on each of the 3 stages at one time. It is absolutely enormous and I was absolutely in awe of the amount of planning and work that goes on in the theater and all of the amazing things they can do in that facility. We then saw a play called "Our Class" which was about a small town in Poland during WWII. It was absolutely heart wrenching, the show itself was absolutely terrific but it just hit everyone so hard and you got so emotionally connected to it that we left just depressed. It was the perfect storm of loving the show and hating the things that went on there. So worth the 3 hours we sat there.

The next day was pretty chill as far as what we did in between class and the play. We were finishing up our first round of critical responses we had to write so a lot of us stayed at the hotel for a few hours and did that, then went and did a little gift shopping at picadilly circus and grabbed lunch, came back did more homework, and then went to a weird play called "Money". It was in this old warehouse and was a 3 story set that they actually took the audience up into and we moved around the set with them. It was freaking weird...I wasn't really a fan. Oh well.

The next day we boarded our "coach" and drove to stratford, stopping in Oxford for an hour and a half on the way (so pretty). In Stratford-upon-avon we stayed in cute little bed and breakfasts and saw the play Arabian Nights which was an absolutely fantastic production and was just beautiful. It was really weird though because there were so many school groups that had to cancel that the theater was SO empty-we ended up moving to the first and second row and there were probably less than a hundred people for what would normally be a sold out show. But nonetheless it was great and I think it was our favorite show we've seen so far (it's just so fun and it was really well done).

Today we drove to York after seeing the Shakespeare houses and Anne Hathaway's Cottage this morning in Stratford and have just been taking a little down time. We had "family dinner" at an Indian restaurant and I think everyone was just ready to veg for the rest of the night.

Here are some pictures thus far!

Trafalger Square

Me petting the cavalry guard's horse, who looked really thrilled haha. But he was sweet he turned and looked at me like he dug the attention and wanted the guy with the weird costume off of his back

My friend Kelsey and I in front of the classic red London phone booth!

Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral, and Bath

We took a very cool day trip today! First we went to Salisbury Cathedral-I slept most of the way up there as I still am not quite 100% after being sick. The cathedral was absolutely breathtaking. I had learned about it in my Humanities class in high school, but you can never fully appreciate or take in something until you see it in person. The architecture was unlike anything I have ever seen before and it was so gorgeous. It was very cool to actually see it in person. (photos to come). We also attended the mass in the church-which was one of the longest masses of my life (they sing every verse to every song.......) but it was a really interesting experience, and the location was so great I didn't mind the length.

We then drove about 1/2 an hour to Stonehenge (actually I probably learned about all three of these things in Humanities-thanks Doc. Wenzel!) which was pretty incredible, but we were on such a tight schedule we didn't stay long. It's actually almost harder to take in I think from up close than it is from a little more distance, which suprised me. A quick look-but I'm happy to have seen another of the wonders of the world :).

We then went to the Roman Bath in the city of Bath. The entire city definitely had a Roman feel indicative of the Roman empire's stronghold there. It is SO cool how they've been able to preserve the bath that was such a huge thing in the culture when England was part of the Roman Empire. There was a great audio tour that we had going throughout the museum which was a really neat way to learn about it at our own pace, rather than having to follow a tour guide or be completely on your own not knowing where to begin. I think Bath was definitely my favorite part of the day.

After a two and a half hour bus ride back to London (during which there was much fun had breaking into songs of our middle school days such as the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, Spice Girls, and others) we relaxed in our rooms, crammed a bunch of people into a hotel room to watch a movie, and now I came downstairs to internet for a bit and work on a critical response that I need to write.

some ups and downs

Well Days 1 and 2 of London were great-day one is already chronicled. But yesterday (day 3) consisted of me having a really nasty bout of the stomach flu and being stuck in my room all day. That was awful-but it's over and so hopefully it's all over and done with. I missed a play last night and class this morning (because I was not yet hydrated enough and still felt really weak) but was better enough to go to a matinee show today of "The Power of Yes" which was....interesting....

I'm just going to head to dinner (my first real meal in 2 days-wahoo!) but will blog later about what else we've been doing, etc.

Long day of travel but safely in London!

Hello everyone!

After a very long day of travel (I've been up for about 30 hours if you don't count the 2ish hours of semi-sleep I got on the plane) we arrived in London this morning (It is now about 7PM). First we got out of minneapolis shortly before noon-but found out they had a bomb scare (evidently a bomb dog sniffed one of their pink suitcases they use to signal the end of unloading a plane or something) and shut it down right after we left. Then we were supposed to leave Detroit for Heathrow at 6PM, and we uneventfully loaded the plane, but then freezing drizzle was closing down all but one runway and they were only allowing planes to leave that were already boarded (thankfully we were) but we sat at the gate for about an hour and a half longer than we were supposed to until they got the ice melted off the runway and de-iced us, as well as waited in line for all of the other planes to go. So we arrived here a little after schedule but have had a great first day.

We arrived in Heathrow after an almost 8 hour flight (which had a pretty darn good dinner and breakfast service for northwest), all of us got our suitcases, and we boarded a coach (bus) for our hotel. We checked in, unpacked, got some lunch, and then met up to learn our way around the Tube system and go walk by St. Paul's Cathedral (very pretty) and go to a tour of the Globe Theater on the south bank of the Thames River. We had a cool tour and then did a workshop which actually was really fun (I was nervous, having virtually no acting experience) but a lot of it was games and stuff and it will prove really helpful when we see Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in a few days!

We are all pretty much bushed and going to go to bed shortly but I'm trying to make myself stay up a bit longer to put my sleep schedule on track quickly.

Stay warm!! This feels like a heat wave (even though it is snowing which makes all of the Brits freak out) but it is probably about 25-30 degrees so it feels really nice compared to what I left behind. Not quite as pleasent as the weather was in New Zealand and Australia-but I'll gladly take it :)

Ready for takeoff!

I'm sitting in a hotel in Minneapolis with my mom, all set to head to the airport in the morning!!! I am hoping for a wonderful and safe trip :). It is so cold here that the slightly warmer weather in England may feel like a heat wave.

I hope everyone has a great January, hopefully I will keep this updated every few days!

So I guess I've been busy!?

So much for blogging regularly, oh well. I guess I had more pressing things on my plate. But it is Christmas break and I am getting all pumped up for my trip across the pond that I leave for in only 10 days! I can't believe it came up so quickly. My first semester of my junior year just flew by, as the rest of my college career has so far, it's scary that I'm more than half way done! I guess I need to nail down a game plan for when I finish my undergrad....EEK!

Anyway, just got done celebrating Christmas, which was wonderful as usual! We normally have a pretty low key holiday with our family that is in Cedar Rapids. The weather was not very christmas-y as it was raining a lot of christmas eve, but it's basically a winter wonderland now, so it may be another day before I can go see my horse and give her her christmas presents-my uncle got me a 20 pound bag of horse treats, which I'm sure she'll mooch out of her caretakers while I am gone (not that she wouldn't succeed in getting them out of me either, she knows how cute she is and uses it to get what she wants-TREATS! she may be a little spoiled haha)

On another note, my last two shows of the summmer were great (as I said I would update-more for my memory than anything else, it just seems a little late in the game). I moved Julia up to training level at Catalpa Corners in Iowa City, and she was great. It was her first training, though not mine. We had a pretty good dressage test for about a 38, not bad for her first training. Clear jumping cross country with some time faults, she was SO good, it was a little sticky in places getting used to the harder questions asked on that level but we had schooled a lot so she was definitely ready. She launched into the water jump over the drop, I think she much prefers the drop into water than just running in, it's as though she says "HOLD ON MOM.....CANNONBALL!!!!!"-she thinks it's much more fun, although I wouldn't mind if she was a bit less exuberant, although that is much preferable to her not liking water. Anyway, she had a decent stadium-a little sticky, I think she was suprised with the height change and I could've ridden her better (that is the main factor, she's got jump to spare) but I was a bit nervous, but overall 2 rails wasn't bad and we figured out a new tack/bit combination for her next show and saw a big improvement in her stadium there. Anyway we ended up in 8th place-I was thrilled to get a ribbon in our first show at that level.

We did another training level at Wayne Dupage, and had an improved dressage which I was really happy with-a 34.5 I think. Then we had a wonderful cross country. I don't know why but sometimes I get so nervous before XC, even though I love it so much. But that ride definitely reminded me of why I love my sport as much as I do. It was a decently challenging course for training and Julia was SO game, we had one or 2 awkward fences but overall it rode S

O great, especially any combinations or big fences she was just a rockstar to, the ones we had weird striding to or whatever weren't anything to worry about, it was more that we were both getting used to moving at a little faster pace and we both came off the course feeling positive and I was thrilled with her. I had a huge grin on my face as I signaled to Cindy (my trainer) that I'd had a clear round-we just were a few seconds slow which I could care less about because she is new to the level and I knew the 2 spots where I'd lost a few seconds so really I knew that we had been going at a true training speed. Stadium day was interesting-our division was approximated to go at about 2:30, really quite late for where we normally are. So the upper levels went in the morning, had lovely sunny weather. Well about noon dark clouds started rolling in and the skies opened up and it started to pour rain. When Hannah and I were getting Lyn and Julia tacked up it started to clear off a little, but of course as soon as I got in my saddle it poured even harder. We went up to the ring (they won't call it unless it's raining or really really bad) and started warming up, which was going great. Right before our division starts it starts to thunder and lightning, so our entire division rides across the huge warm up ring at Lamplight into some empty temporary stabling to get ourselves and our horses out of the storm. We stood there for about an hour and finally the thunder had quit for long enough for them to tell us to get back on. They told us to just come in as we felt warmed up since

we all had to get back on and get our horses moving and jumping again. Hannah and I were 2 of the first few in. I had a much much smoother round on a pretty big course (I have no idea why, but the jumps always look so huge at wayne, even though I know they can't be any bigger than max...must be the atmosphere). I think I had one or two rails but with all the confusion they counted me as a double clear (the rails were easily fixable, the first fence we just got weird striding to-she's still green, and the second was to a double that we would have either had to take off really long and had trouble with the second fence or take the first rail, but that is not a big deal at all). So we ended up 4th (we should've been 7th) which I didn't realize because someone else picked up my ribbon because it was raining they didn't do a victory gallop. So, I emailed the organizer telling her of the mix up but it never got switched-but I did all I could and I'm sure it's not the first time that's happened so I guess I'll just take the white ribbon, haha.

XC at Wayne Dupage-all pictures by Derith Vogt (thanks!)

Stadium at Wayne Dupage-my pants are about 2 shades darker because of the rain-my trailer smelled like a swamp for weeks!

I couldn't have been more pleased with my horse this year, she really stepped up to the plate and grew up a lot. It's not every horse that can move up to training in their first real year of competing. I am so proud of Julia-it makes it ten times better since I've been her trainer (with from the ground help from Cindy every now and then to make sure I'm teaching her right) and basically the only one to ride her since she was only a little ways into her basic training. I definitely had tears in my eyes on more than one occasion because she is just so great. She's beautiful, a great mover, athletic, smart, and just a peach! (I know I say that stuff a lot-but I can't help it, I'm a proud mom haha). I am so excited for the future with this horse, I think she's going to be something special-she certainly is to me already. I am so thankful for the support my parents and also of my trainer, Cindy Burke, and all of the KSS eventing team. It wouldn't be possible or nearly as fun without them!

Anyway-now that that was about 4 months ago I'm glad to have that part of the blog finished. This semester went really well, I enjoyed most of my classes, worked hard, but managed to have some fun too! I am very excited to go to England and will definitely keep this updated every few days while I'm there!!

Merry Christmas!