Currently eating: Baguette with melted white cheddar & ham and locally grown carrots.
Currently doing: Uploading photos from Amsterdam!

I have finally figured it out. Use this link

http://picasaweb.google.com/brianacoles

The link can also be found on the right side of my page, under my profile photo (the tiny one). I've finally caught up with what has happened thus far. I don't have all that many photos because I try to keep the scenery/building photos of famous stuff to a minimum. I could always look those up online or in books. Look forward to more albums soon!

Hey all,
It's been awhile since I've written. I want to keep up better with this. I just wait until there are too many things to tell and then I don't want to sit down and write for hours. Also, please keep me informed of things at home. I love getting emails (at bri_cutie@yahoo.com) about what everyone is doing. I'm also trying to figure out how to just link to photo albums because it takes a lot of time to put each photo on this page and I want to share entire albums.

I got back from Amsterdam last Sunday. It was different. Las Vegas has nothing on the debauchery that is happening in Amsterdam. I could go on and on about all the interesting little cultural things that I picked up there, but it's really hard to put into words if you didn't experience it.

Ten best things about Amsterdam:
1. 300 pound and over the hill hookers can actually find work
2. When you cross the road you must cross: a twenty foot side-walk, a bike lane (where motorized scooters can also drive and out of all the lanes this is where you are most likely to get hit), the tracks for trams going both ways, the bus lane, and finally the car traffic. And the sign flashing a green walking man does not mean that cars will stop (even when their light is red)
3. A half pound of fries in a paper cone with a cup of mayonaise on the top is apparently a treat
4. The city is built on canals. If you close your eyes, you can almost imagine you are in Italy
5. Don't eat anything called a "Space Cake"
6. Everyone speaks English and all signs are in English except of course the bus schedule, the directional signs at the airport and train stations, and anything else vital for tourists to understand.
7. No matter what street you turn down, you somehow always end up at Central Station
8. Men will do anything to get your attention- much more aggressive than American men- including singing "Stop! In the name of love" and "American Woman" by Lenny Kravitz to you in the middle of the street
9. Every business had a cat and it was not uncommon to see them rubbing all over espresso machines, the ice cream containers at Ben and Jerry's or even slinking all over the bar where we were staying. The manager told us that it was because of mice which were a result of the dampness. So let me get this straight, I'm either ingesting cat hair and the mites that come with that or mouse feces?
10. Only a 45 minute flight, at sunset, over the English Channel= Amazing

Oh and one additional thing, and my personal favorite, their version of a hotdog is a hot, crispy baguette with a hotdog sized hole all the way through it except the bottom is closed. They spray in the sauce and then jam the hotdog down into the baguette, which distributes the sauce. It is AMAZING! Hopefully I will be able to upload the Amsterdam photos soon and post the link to them.

Something I've learned about myself: seeing old buildings, artwork, and museums is great to discover past culture, but I'd much rather sit in a coffee shop and use my eyes and ears to experience my surroundings and the culture now.

I bought a book on Prague, which is one of the places that my group will be traveling during our three week "Easter break." Three weeks for Easter? I'll take it!

Things I've learned while in England:
-Potatoes will sprout in two days
-Bread will mold in four, both of these probably due to the moisture
-The city will shut down in case of snowfall
-Your hair straightener will blow up if you plug it in
-Girls will wear a mini skirt in the middle of Winter but say they aren't cold because they have tights on... tights?
-Fosters is the Keystone Light of England college students
-Sexes are not separated. Bathrooms, showers, you name it, it is all co-ed
-Teachers are called your "tutor" and you address them by their first name
-You do not buy books for a class but, instead, check them out from the library in 1 week intervals
-Do-it-yourself, complimentary chlamydia tests are actually sent to students by mail from the university
-The cheeses and breads really are better in Europe
-I am inadequately prepared for the cold, in fact my goal tomorrow is to find a warm coat
-Tipping 5% is adequate
-The pound is stronger than the Euro, I really wish England would use Euros
-You can put clothes on the heaters here because they are actually radiators
-Women actually wear heels on cobblestone because they are slaves to fashion (not me, seeing as I don't really know which hospital my student healthcare works at and I don't want to break my ankle)
-You can sit in the back seat of a car on the right-hand-side and see yourself in the rear-view-mirror... think about it
-My teachers don't think much about American's and never miss a chance to make a crack at us
-The English are much more concerned about the environment than Americans
-There are curse words in the English vocabulary that don't even have a translation into American English
-There is a reason that the rate of obesity is low here, the portions are child-sized
-International packages= expensive
-The soda pop here is disgustingly sweet, which is good, I've been trying to stop drinking the stuff and now I can
-And on that note, when you order a glass of soda in a restaurant, it doesn't include free refills
-No one has heard of ranch dressing, which they pronounce much the same as we pronounce the word "raunch"... not synonymous
-In the response to the recession, the government gives a 2.13% discount off all retail merchandise, which makes it so much more affordable
-Football (aka soccer) is boss
-Trains are not cheap, a twenty minute trainride costs about $8
-They really do announce to "Mind the gap" which is perplexing seeing as the gap is at most ten centimeters


I've really been working on my Spanish. I'm really behind and the last time I took a class at all was 1.5 years ago. Luckily I've met a lot of people from Mexico and Spain and while I'm too embarrassed to actually speak around them, they quiz me from time to time and I listen to their conversations.
Plans for the future include: a trip to Paris to stay with one of Martha's friends, the Easter Break extravaganza, and a trip to London to visit Kat, one of my sorority friends who I haven't seen since I left U of I.

Here is a photo taken of Stacy and I from the top of a three story bunk bed at our hostle.

I finally have my address. It is
Bishops Rise
Broad Hall 32, Room #6
Hatfield
Hertfordshire
AL10 9BT

Last Saturday a few of my friends and I ventured to London for an overnight trip. This was my first experience in a hostle and it wasn't bad. Beds stacked 3 high, 25 people to a room. It was clean enough, and quiet enough. We had a group of about eight. The bus to London was easy enough to take. We got to the hostle and unloaded. Then we went to look at the National Portait Gallery. I'm not huge on history so most of the paintings of every Duke, Earl, memeber of the royal family, and religious leaders were meaningless to me. My favorite room was the first one titled "The Tudors." After watching the movie The Other Boelynn girl and then reading the book several times, I did some research on that era, so I knew the portaits of those people. It was good to put a face with a name. Then the group split up because the rest of the group wanted to go back to the hostle and Stacy and I wanted to walk around. This was our mistake. Stacy and I didn't have the name of or hostle, the address, a map of London, nor did we even know where we were directionally to our hostle. So we hung out until about 7pm when we decided to make our way back. This turned into a 2.5 hour adventure even though once we got our bearings the next day, we realized the whole time that we had been 15 minutes away from our hostle. Phrase of the day "Live it, learn it." I will never be caught mapless again, and I will always make sure that everyone in the group has all the same information. So Stacy and I just kept asking people where Covent Garden was because someone in our group had identified the park right next to our hostle as such. Guess what? That wasn't the park's name. Stacy and I were directed to Covent Garden, imagine our dismay when we realized that we were lost. No one had heard of the street that our group told us our hostle was one. When we finally made it there, we realized that that's because we had the street name wrong all along. It was an adventure and I'm glad it's over. The next day Stacy and I couldn't figure out how to take the same bus we'd taken there, back to Hatfield. We ended up taking the underground to King's Cross Station. Yep, that is the one where Harry Potter was filmed. On the way to our platform, we saw that they had made a tribute to HP and between platform 9 and 10, they had a sign that said 9 3/4 and a luggage cart that was half way in the wall. It was funny. Then I had my first experience with an above-ground train. We made it home safely and exhausted. I think I walked at least 10 miles over these two days.

On that day it started snowing. It has continued ever since. School has been canceled three days this week, including today. Unfortunately here, that means that the teacher still assigns you work, and even more work because they say well since you can't see my lecture, I will just assign you three books to read that will get the same point across. This weather reminds me of the Seattle disaster I believe of 2006. It was only a little bit of snow, but Seattle was poorly equipped to handle it and the drivers weren't used to driving in snow. While I sat in my room thinking Idaho had way more snow than this when I left, and the city didn't stop functioning, the locals were having a ball building snowmen and igloos. At a few inches of snow, the busses stopped running, people couldn't get to work so the banks and stores were closed and everything including the library and other campus services were closed. The people who clean our building didn't come to work for a few days. It was crazy. Today I am going to Amsterdam. Here goes my second experience with a hostle. My number one thing to do is to see the Anne Frank Museum.