Final Week @ Winchester!

And it's the final countdown. One more week until I have to repack my suitcase and head out to London where Justin and I will begin our travels! This last week the large group of Americans and myself went to the club on campus dressed in "America" theme. Some people had some pretty awesome red, white, and blue overalls. I wasn't dressed up enough but I still sported USA colors. Everyone seemed pretty sad that it was our last BOP but most people are continuing their travels as well. For others....back to good ole 'Merica. Justin is still skiing and traveling around the French Alps - I couldn't be more jealous but I'm happy that he's having a good time. I think he might have gone crazy if he stayed here any longer (this campus is something like 70% females and 30% males) - Sorry Justin, I didn't make too many guy friends for you to hang out with! And lucky for him he gets to spend a WHOLE MONTH with one, amazing female :) (that's ME!). Let's hope we both make it back alive - kidding. Only positive expectations for this trip. Again as a reminder - we will be starting out in Madrid. I booked a pretty cool hostel for us to stay in (at least it seems that way) and then we will be heading to Segovia to see my friend that lived with my family in high school - Victor. His dad is going to hook us up with a hotel to stay at which is very nice of him! From there...Barcelona, South France, and then it's kind of up in the air. I'm really looking forward to Prague, Berlin, Rome/Venice, and Amsterdam for the second time. Everyone cross your fingers so that the weather will warm up! It's better than the cold of Wisconsin but I really need to be able to wear shorts sometime soon. Plus I am disgustingly white....sun please? Tomorrow (Saturday the 30th) I am going to London with my friends Bri, Rachel, and Becca. We have an appointment at the IceBar - and you can only guess...it's a bar MADE COMPLETELY OF ICE! I will report back about it but I guess they give you a fuzzy cape and gloves to wear.. and with our 16 pound ticket purchase (that's like $24) we get a complimentary drink....in a cup made of ice. How cool! We plan to do some hard core souvenir shopping and hit up Chipotle for dinner . Well I'm clearly just wasting time and not working on my essays. I only have a week to complete 3 essays! Ay. Where has the time gone? I miss my friends and family....can't wait to see you all in May but I do need to experience A LOT more of Europe before I come back :) Cheers.

Chiro School Visit

I haven't updated my blog in a while because I haven't been doing anything too exciting!I walked Justin to the train station yesterday so he could start his journey to London in order to catch a plane to Sweden (He's visiting one of his friends that he played hockey with at Gustavus). Earlier this week ( Wed the 13th) we visited a chiropractic college in Bournemouth! It was about a 45 minute train ride and unfortunately we had some issues with our train tickets. We bought VERY cheap tickets which seemed awesome at the time but a) my tickets never ended up getting emailed to me (we had to print them out which usually you can just pick them up at a machine at the train station) and b) normally you buy a ticket but it doesn't really matter what particular time you ride the train - these tickets were for a specific time. We were done touring the school and checking out the city by 5 pm but our return train wasn't scheduled until 7 pm. It was too cold to just hang around so we had to buy another ticket for a much greater price. Stupid - you live and you learn!! Despite those issues the school was very interesting. The number of chiropractors in the UK is very small and I think this school and another in Wales are the only 2 in the UK. About 600 students attend the Anglo-European college of chiropractic and I found it intriguing that you don't need an undergraduate degree before starting your chiropractic education. So some people start around age 18 or 19. It's much cheaper than schools in the US but it is a 5 year program with summer breaks (whereas in the US it's a 3 1/2 year program all year round). The school is in an old church which was funny because the library was really awkward. The stained glass windows were very pretty but all of the shelves of books and desks looked so out of place. It was a good experience but I think I'll stick with my choice of planning to attend Life in July :) I'm ready for some hot weather. Oh and before we toured this chiro school we met with a chiropractor in the town of Winchester. It was an office with a chiropractic, osteopath, and physiotherapists. We spoke with the chiropractor for a little while and got an idea of what chiropractic is like in the UK. All very good things and thanks to Justin for looking all of this stuff up! In other news...I have 4 essays to write in the next 2 1/2 weeks before Justin and I start our travels. We are purchasing a 'Eurail' pass which is a pass that provides you with free or discounted tickets on some many days within the month to 24 different countries. Our plan is to start in Madrid on April 8. We will then see my foreign exchange student that stayed with me in highschool in his hometown of Segovia, Spain and then keep traveling to Barcelona. From there we will be hitting two cities in South France...one where Justin's friend is living and the other is Nice which is on the coast and as I've heard a very beautiful area. After that we will travel through Italy, possibly Greece, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, maybe Croatia/Czech Republic, and Ireland. Then we will head back to London for a few days and catch a flight to Minneapolis on May 14th. Phew - that's a lot! I will keep posted throughout my travels when I can. If anyone has any suggestions for places to go/things to see feel free to email me (alsheser@uwec.edu). Anything will help! Keep in touch.

Paris: The wine is actually cheaper than the water!

2 - 5 of March. This chunnel trip to Paris was my Christmas gift from Justin and it turned out to be a great weekend! We left from the London St Pancras station on Saturday afternoon. Met an interesting French couple on our train ride...the guy was a pastry chef and had worked with some famous Chef that I don't really know of but Justin did. We got to our hostel: St. Christophers Inn. It was very busy but nice and we actually met two girls that went to UW Madison (originally from Minnesota). We ate at a Thai place that night which was very nice and then we ended up finding our way (thanks to some random French pediatric surgeon we met) to an area with different clubs and bars. We got rejected from two of them because first, we weren't in proper dress (I guess our bright turquoise and green jackets don't fit in around France - we later realized everyone wears dark colors) and second, because Justin looked too sleepy. He looked pretty awake to me but whatever!!! Sunday and Monday are kind of a blur because we did so much site seeing! The highlights that you may be familiar with: the Eiffel tower at night was very pretty (we went around midnight). We saw the view of Paris from the top of Tour Montparnasse. The famous Arc and Champs-Elysees street were very gorgeous at night as well. We went on an hour boat tour and of course enjoyed some French cuisine. I absolutely loved crepes and pastries. Mmmmmmm I indulged in way too many sweets but I went down a notch in my belt so maybe all that walking helped me out? We did not tour the Louvre museum but we did see quite a bit of it from our boat tour and before we left on Tuesday. I included a picture of one of my favorite parts about London - the lock bridge. Couples can buy or bring a personalized lock which they lock up to the bridge and then they throw the key in the river symbolizing that their love is eternal. Cheesy, yes, and no we didn't do it, but I thought that it looked really artsy - especially with some segments of graffiti. Our HUGE mistake... ordering two glasses of water (we actually ordered one but of course with the language barrier he thought we ordered two) which ended up being €8. The part that made us excited yet angry was that a bottle of wine got as cheap as under €2....Ouch. Monday night we bunked up in a sketchy hotel...stained walls, really old quilt with more stains on the bed, and scary bathroom arrangements. It was kind of fun though since it made us feel more on vacation in a foreign country. Neither of us came out with any weird rashes so it's alright :). Some other interesting moments happened in the metro as well - Justin lost his ticket, we ended up having to buy more even though we thought we bought 3 day passes. So we ended up coming up with a little system in order to get us both through with one ticket - pretty sneaky :). All-in-All great trip! Awesome Christmas gift from Justin. I really enjoyed it and I was completely exhausted when we got back to Winchester yesterday. I really didn't learn any French and most people just laughed or smiled when I tried to say anything simple. Au revoir!!!