a little pick me up.

I guess this is a continuation of my "i miss you monday" post. I love love love London but I'm having quite the hard time balancing my life here and the people I left back at home.
And the people I left are having a hard time balancing me being gone.
Without going in to boring detail, I decided to give my more-than-just-a-friend guy some space for a few days. Part of me is determined to focus this extra time, mentality & energy on the positive, and while at the same time I feel like part of me is broken. I'm finding it really hard to take a break from talking to someone that I've talked to everyday for almost 4 years.

I might feel broken, but I have a whole weekend full of adventures with my roommates to beautiful Leeds Castle & historic Canterbury - and I'm not going to let a semi-broken heart keep me from living it up while in London.

Things I love Tuesday!

Browsing through the pictures on weheartit is one of my guilty pleasures and I've gathered quite a lot of pictures of interior designs that I love! I graduate in May and I am so, so excited to (hopefully!) find a job & be able to move into an amazing apartment so that I can decorate as well as these!






My all time favorite room setup is from IKEA! (Shocking, I know). I love it so much that I screencapped the image from the website so that one day I can try and replicate it! The mini chandelier, the color, everything.

It's Monday & I miss you

I wanted to title this "missing monday" to play on the M's, but it didn't really fit I guess.
I haven't felt super homesick until lately.

I skype call my mom everyday and email my dad several times/day, but calling my grandma and a certain boy doesn't come as often. So when I got the chance to talk to both in the past few days, it really bummed me out about how much I missed them & how they missed me.

So I guess I am using this post for little things I've found on weheartit that I think fit how I feel.
I won't get all boring & describe my guy situation in detail but it goes something like:
Known each other almost 4 years, never had the title of dating, but have been exclusive to each other for most of the 4 years. We would be serious if I hadn't gone to NYC or London.
But there was no way I would pull a Lauren Conrad (ie when she didn't go to Paris for Teen Vogue because of Jason).

And now here I am having the time of my life but wondering what could have been.

Dover Castle!

This Friday's field trip was to Dover Castle! It's about two hours away from London and is close to 900 years old. When you think of a castle in medieval times, Dover has everything you'd think of - a drawbridge, (what used to be) a moat, towers and the coolest tunnels!
Our tour guide explained to us that when the French were invading Britain around 1100 or 1200, the people in the castle dug extensive tunnels under the castle and outward so they wouldn't be noticed! In the most creepy way, it was awesome walking through them and thinking about people walking through them 800 years ago, fighting off an invading army.



When I was 1 or 2 years old, my parents took my brother and I to England and Dover was one of the places we went! Obviously I don't remember anything from being there 20 years ago, but it was a really cool feeling to look over the white cliffs and think that my little eyes as a baby had seen this before!
The other nice thing was actually getting to be out of the city! Living, working and going to school inside the heart of London 5 days/week is completely different than what I'm used to back home in New York (I had never even taken a bit of real public transportation until living in NYC, other than a bus to and from south campus!) My roommates and I sat and climbed on this ledge and, if we weren't on schedule, we would've stayed all day. It was beautiful.

Beautiful weather!

As I checked weather.com today I thought I had definitely typed in the wrong city. Before I got here last month, all I heard from people was "you'll certainly need an umbrella!", but as of today, weather.com says it'll be sunny for the next week!


While I love this sunny weather, I admit I'm missing Autumn back home. London doesn't see a drastic change during the fall, like I'm used to back in central NY - where there are dozens of places to pick apples, run through corn mazes, eat donuts & apple cider while gazing at the changing leaves.

So I thought I'd pay a little homage to the weather that I'm missing, all while I'm sitting here enjoying this lovely, yet different weather!

Twitter Tuesday!

I'm feeling motivated today, for all sorts of reasons, and thought, hey! I'm going to update this more than just on the weekends.

I am a twitter fanatic & while searching through some job listings today (just for kicks, I don't graduate until May!) I stumbled across a community college in my hometown that is looking to hire someone to teach some one-day non-credit courses on things like blogging & twitter.
And I thought, hey! I tweet! And have taken some social networking classes. Yadda yadda I emailed my academic adviser to see if he thought I was crazy for wanting to apply, but we shall see what happens.

In the mean time, here are some twitter accounts that I enjoy following:

@tinybuddha To steal from their "about me": The Tiny Buddha will bring you wisdom! Quotes from the wise, happiness tips, and stories about living out loud.
I always have these tweets sent to my phone for little pick-me-ups throughout the day!

@byEmily Yes, this is Emily fromhttp://cupcakesandcashmere.com!

I enjoy following her on twitter for twitpic'd outfits and a nice way to be notified when her blog is updated!

@bust_magazine I enjoy reading Bust's tweets because they're always something different. Current news, DIY links, funny articles/videos, you name it.

@TalentZooJobs
It's almost that time of year where all the college seniors (myself included) gather up their cover letters and resumes and join the hunt for a job. Although I'm not quite ready to do so, I like that TalentZooJobs updates often and with places all over the US.

Who are your favorite people/companies to follow on twitter?

Case of the Mondays!

Ah yes today there was yet again another tube strike in London. Lucky for me, I only had one class later in the afternoon so this morning I was able to leisurely watch last night's episode of Dexter, laundry, etc before class.

Normally I have loads of things to post from the past weekend, but this time I'm lacking on pictures because, during our fieldtrip on Friday, it we got caught in such a bad storm!

Luckily we were able to tour some things that were indoors, including The Royal Pavilion. It was strange and amazing to see a building so inspired from Asian and Indian architectures. It was used by King George IV and practically every room was inspired by Asian cultures. Staircase railings were carved to look like bamboo leaves and shoots, chandeliers had dragon statues wrapping around the tops, and couches were shaped to look like little gondolas! (Everything on the inside is authentic, so unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures to preserve the quality of the textiles).



Brighton is right next to the English Channel, which I think made the storm 100x worse than if we had been further inland. Lots of rain &heavy wind made me sad! (obviously haha)

By nighttime though, the day got a lot better when my roommate invited me to go see the band, MONA, from Nashville! I definitely suggest checking out their music because I think they are going to go very, very far in their career! Personally, I thought that their live performance sounded like a mixture of Maroon 5 & Kings of Leon.

This upcoming Friday I am going to Dover Castle which sits next to white cliffs and has secret tunnels used in the world wars!

I'm hoping to get creative and update this throughout the week? Or would my lovely followers prefer this be strictly about London?