Snape

*Spoiler alert* DON’T read this if you haven’t read the seventh book of Harry Potter and you plan on doing it.

So as some of you may know, at the start of last year (Jan. 2011) I decided to reread the books of the Harry Potter series that I had already read (1-6) and then finally finish the series by reading the seventh book, watching the corresponding movies after I finished each book. I know it’s sad that I hadn’t finished, but when the seventh book came out, it had been so long that I didn’t remember much of the rest of the series and I really wanted to know what was going on, so I promised myself that I would try my best to not find out anything that happened in the last book until I reread the entire series.

From January to May 2011, I read up to book four and had started the fifth before I began studying for the MCAT. I was about three chapters into the fifth book when it was time for me to leave for London for a semester, so I put a long hold on that.Somehow I was able to get this probably illegal app on my android that had all of the books, so during the long tube rides in London, I’d pull out my phone and get some reading done, which I thought was pretty cool since I was in the actual city where a lot of things happened and were modeled after. I probably did the most reading, however, on the 11-hour plane ride back home in December. By then, I was at least three quarters of the way through the fifth book so when I got home, I finished it pretty quickly. Since it was Christmas Break, I also got through the sixth book, which I had tried rereading during my senior year but didn’t… Anyway, I didn’t start the seventh book until school started this semester, but I lost so much sleep reading that book. One, it’s a huge book, and two, I always decided to start reading like 20 minutes before I knew I should be asleep but would end up staying up for another hour and half reading because I couldn’t put it down. A lot of people don’t like the seventh book because it’s really slow until the end, but I quite enjoyed the journey of the three that showed a lot of hardships and friendship development. So on the weekend that I finally completely finished reading the Harry Potter series, I spent like 5 hours in bed just finishing. I must have read the entire last half of the book on one day. I think it was March 10. I finished that night and went to sleep with the satisfaction that I had finally finished. Finally.

The next day, I talked to Andy about the book and of course we talked about Snape. I don’t think I was extremely surprised, but I didn’t know to what extent he had loved Lily. I think it is one of the best and most epic romances in the story. Andy pointed out the part where Snape is dying and his last words are to Harry, “Look into my eyes.” It didn’t occur to me until then that he wanted to look into Harry’s eyes because they are Lily’s eyes. I think I had read the last portion of the book so quickly that I didn’t really have time to process everything that happened, but later that night, as I laid in bed listening to Kiss Me by Ed Sheeran (song down below), I thought about Snape. I thought about his undying love for Lily and how it changed his entire life. I thought about how his love for her eventually killed him and how he had done everything to protect her son and his arch enemy’s son for 17 years to avenge her death, and I broke down. I cried probably the hardest and longest I’ve cried in years for Snape. It was probably half an hour before I could stop the flow of tears, but every time I thought I was good I would just start crying again. I don’t know why it affected me so much that night because I just can’t get those same feelings anymore, but I know that I felt so much pain for him. It made me feel so sad that his love was never returned and that even though Lily chose James, Snape never stopped loving her.

Ever since that night, I haven’t been able to stop listening to Kiss Me. I don’t think it’s necessarily all the words of the song, but the mood the song sets. There is one verse, however, where he says “I’m falling for your eyes, but they don’t know me yet” that caught my ears. I know that most of my music is really slow mellow “sad” music, but this song just got to me. Every time it comes on my iPod, I think of Snape. I decided to listen to the song tonight, and here I am writing this post when I should be finishing my homework and going to bed.

I Thought I was Pretty Flexible

…and then I tried Yoga.

I attended my first Yoga (Bikram Yoga) class for the first time last Thursday and it was terrifying. I’ve been wanting to find a class to take ever since Mum did a bit with us in London last semester, and I finally found one that’s really close to my house. I’m still a very new Yogi, but I’ll go ahead and explain what I know so far. So Bikram yoga is another term for “hot yoga,” which is yoga done in a steam room. I think the temperature is usually at around 105F and it is quite steamy. I’ve only had two classes so far, but I remember my second instructor saying that there are 26 different postures and then two (really crazy) breathing exercises at the very end. That’s when I know I’ve made it to the end at last. Each class is an hour and a half and YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO LEAVE. So far, no one has left the room in the middle of a class just yet. It gets pretty tempting though in the last half hour because it is so hot and humid. You just have to bring super almost frozen water so that it stays cool up until the very end.

I haven’t really gotten that…”relaxing” feeling that everyone supposedly gets during my first two sessions, but I’m hoping to get there. My biggest thing in there is staring at myself in the mirror. Whenever I go to a public bathroom, I always forget to check myself out in the mirror. I just get really self conscious and one of the things about yoga is you HAVE to watch yourself so you know you’re doing the right posture. Most of the time, I feel completely lost. It reminds me of those couple times I went to zumba with Khristina freshman year and whew, that was bad. We definitely look back on those classes and laugh….

I signed up for the intro package, which was just $20 for the next ten days. I already missed two days because I was just too tired so I’m giving myself one more day to miss next week before my ten days are up. I will see if I want to continue for the rest of the semester though. While I like stretching myself (ha…), I think I’d like to try regular yoga too. The whole staying in a steam room for 90 minutes seems a bit daunting.

Plans or no plans?

I was assigned to read the book called Your Inner Fish  by Niel Shubin for one of my classes this semester. It’s a book about a paleontologist’s (Shubin) experience with….well, paleontology. I don’t know when I was planning on writing my first reflection about my study abroad experience, but when I came across a quote that Shubin included in the first chapter of his book, I knew it was time. This quote pretty much summed up my experiences with planning each of our trips during the semester, specifically the mid-semester trip.

It is a quote by Dwight D. Eisenhower: “In preparing for battle, I have found that planning is essential, but plans are useless.”

Shubin had used this quote to sum up his experiences with his excavations around the globe to find the right fossils that would show evidence that there was indeed a middle ground between the anatomical structures of fish and amphibians. In the first chapter, he writes of how he spent weeks and weeks planning the trips to the Arctic and what slim chances he and his team had at finding something of major importance in his study. What had planned to be a six week trip to finding the right fossil turned out to be a ten year long search. I think the point he was trying to make by including that quote that sometimes (most of the time, actually) you can plan right down to the tee what you want to happen, but the world will just turn its back on you and mess you up completely.

I felt a strong urge to write about planning after reading that quote because of the relevance I felt it had towards the trip I had desperately tried to plan for our mid-semester break in London but ended up having to be played by ear from the very beginning. Four other girls and I decided to take a quick-paced trip around some mainland European countries using a bus pass, which we found to be the cheapest way to go. One of the biggest lessons we learned (the hard way), however, was that the less expensive something is, the less convenient it is. A direct relationship. I had spent hours upon hours the couple weeks before the big trip, our first big trip actually, trying to work around the tight bus schedule that we were given. It was tough because while we could reach our destination from one country to another, we may not have been able to leave if a bus was scheduled to leave. Inconvenient. Since we were going from country to country, a lot of the bus rides were at least 8 hours, which meant that we would have to take night buses so we wouldn’t waste an entire day driving. On top of that, we had to book our hostels for the right date and make sure there were enough beds available in one room to fit all of us together (for safety). It was like putting together a 1000 piece puzzle that was one solid color.

About a week before we left, I felt pretty good about our super plan. It might have been complicated, but it would get us to where we wanted to go with just a perfect amount of time in each place. Our plan had been to start off by bus/ferrying from London Victoria Bus Station to Brussels, Belgium on a nightbus, giving us an entire day in Brussels. Then, later that night, we would bus on over to Berlin, Germany and stay there for two nights to recover from the night bus, which as it sounds, is excruciatingly tiring. It’s not like a plane, where you pretty much fly nonstop from place to place. We stopped for bathroom and food breaks; we stopped to get on a ferry; we stopped to get gas. You get it. Many stops and not a lot of time to sleep. After Berlin, we were to make our way to Prague and stay over one night, followed by Vienna for another night. After Vienna, was Budapest (a highly recommended city to visit….which we didn’t do….) and from there to Munich for a day, followed by another nightbus to Amsterdam, and finally, from Amsterdam back home to London on a night bus.

In short: London→Brussels→Berlin→Prague→Vienna→Budapest→Munich→Amsterdam→London all in ten days.

Did it go as planned? Of course not. Besides almost having my card swiped from me right in front of me, this trip brought about fears that I was not prepared to have. If you are at all familiar with me, you’d know that I LOVE to plan. It’s not because I enjoy planning, necessarily, but I feel that if I don’t plan, things will go awfully wrong. Anyway, after we finally arrived in Brussels, we went immediately to the bus booking office (Eurolines, btw) to book our next ride to Berlin. One thing I have to tell you is that one of the conditions of the bus pass is that you can only book your next trip from the country you’re leaving from, so there was really no way for us to book our next rides until we got there. Little did we know that buses are quite popular modes of transportation. To our extreme dismay, every bus to Berlin at the time we had wanted was full and there was absolutely no way for us to get to Berlin that entire weekend because it was also break for the rest of schools in Europe. Just our luck. It felt like we spend an eternity figuring out what we were going to do before we finally came to the decision to just completely scratch our first three planned days and go from there. This really rattled me that entire day because all these worries popped into my head. What if we couldn’t get back to London in time? How would we get home? Where would we stay, since we didn’t have hostels booked in the city we were going to next? MY PLANS ARE RUINED.

So what we actually ended up doing was this: London→Brussels→Vienna→Prague→Munich→PARIS WHAT?→Amsterdam→London

I know. It’s looks absolutely nothing like what we had planned. That’s why Eisenhower’s quote stood out so much to me. For me, I have to plan, but often, plans can go awry and you just have to go with the flow and be strong. That was probably the first major lesson I learned while abroad. I learned to just let go sometimes and let things play out. The trip, however unplanned, still turned out to be an eye-opening experience, where I learned to cope with what I have and be as resourceful as possible while still enjoying the present.

As a final note, I’d like to add that this experience didn’t convince me that I never should plan for things, but it did convince me that when plans don’t go right, it’s not the end of the world and I shouldn’t let that hinder my goals.

I had a dream

I just want to remind myself later that I had a dream. I had a dream that I saw a hippo eat a zebra and it was intense.

 

Thankful

I’m only one week away from coming home and have been doing a lot of reflecting lately about the time I’ve spent here. I’m sure I will have many posts to reflect on all the things I’ve done here, but for this post, I’d like to thank everyone who’s been supportive during my time here. While I had a lot of fun being here and independent, away from what I’m most familiar with, the thing I want most right now is to go home and see my family and friends again. Family and friends.

It wasn’t until coming here, not knowing too many people, that I realized how much my friends have an impact in my life.  I don’t know how I would have survived here without my late night (they’re afternoon) Skype dates with some of them to catch up on the latest happenings back at school. Even if we didn’t talk at all during the semester, I appreciate any message or wall post on Facebook I received from y’all. Even though nobody is going to admit it out loud, everyone loves feeling missed.  So thanks, my St. Mary’s friends. I truly missed y’all while I was over here and can’t wait to go home and catch up with y’all (in the new semester too)!!

Of course, I can’t forget about my best friend of more than 10 years now. Even being thousands of miles apart, we still find ways to connect on a (semi) regular basis. The time difference combined with my really random travel schedule and her busy school schedule made it hard at times to schedule a Skype/Google plus date, but we did it! Sometimes, I just needed her to spill my heart and troubles because she is someone who I feel understands me so well. I love you, Danielle! Thank you for being who you are!

AND ALSO of course I can’t forget about Mr. Andy over there. I think this is pretty much as long of a distance we’ll ever get in our relationship (hopefully…), and while it got difficult at times not seeing each other on a regular basis as we do when I’m at home, we did well. I’ve come to realize that when you love someone, it’s not always about the physicality of seeing them or being next to them, but about the emotional connection that you share. Being away from Andy this semester has made me grow fonder of him want to share more experiences with him in the future. So thank you, Andy, for always being there to listen to my rants and woes.

And last but not least, I must thank my parents. In the past two and half years since going to college, I’ve felt like I’ve become a lot closer to my parents. It’s not like I wasn’t close with them before, but I think in the process of “growing up” a bit, I’ve learned a little more about life and have come to appreciate everything they’ve done for me. There’s no way I could have come to London to have the experience of my life without their continuous love and support. They are the ones who I give all the credit for me being who I am right now, today. 爸，媽，太感謝你了，你為我所做的一切。(google translate ftw)

Every Day Counts

Because I have traveled myself out, I decided to stay in the London for all of the time I have left here. Starting on December 1, I decided that I would do something every single day to make it count. Just so I don’t forget, LET’S MAKE A LIST!

December 1: Walked to the Science Museum, intending to go to the Kensington Library afterwards, but spent so much time at the museum that it was too late to go to the library. *cough* Really. The museum was SO cool. It had bits of historical artifacts here and there, ships, two floors of medicinal history, and some cool artsy fartsy stuff, BUT THE BEST PART was the activity areaaaaaaaa. Ever since I was a little kid, I absolutely LOVED the parts of the museums where you get to mess with things. This one was a pretty good size and had things like lights to play with shadows, mirrors for reflections (physics, nyaaaah!), a rising and falling bubble window, magnifying glass things, and a huge turning sand wheel. Honestly, this stuff was meant for little kids, but I think I will always enjoy it.

December 2:Ok I know I did something during the day, but I can’t for the life of me remember right now. Hopefully, whatever I was doing, I took pictures for, so I will go through my camera later and let you know. I DO remember that I went to the Blow Up record party that night with Stephen and Marquielle though! It was a program we found out about through FIE and decided to go check out the bands that were playing at Ginglik. First off, this place was really difficult to find. I knew that it was really close to the station we exited (Shepard’s Bush) but when we got out, there was no Ginglik to be found. We walked around for a bit and then I looked across the street to the little island garden and spotted the sign. Can you believe this….? It led underground. Creeeeepy. Once we got inside, it wasn’t as creepy. The band that we heard first was quite interesting. They were these hardcore Unionists from the 80′s that were craAaAzyyyy. After they got off, a cool electronic type band played. They had like 3 synthesizers, a guy playing the drumset and another guy doing bongos. It was very cool watching them and watching the guys in front of me dance goofily. I was pretty tired when we left, but I watched some ADVENTURE TIME with Stephen. I’ve known about the quirkiness of Adventure Time from clips that Andy had showed me, but I seriously had no idea that the show was THIS AWESOME. It is soooooo me!!!!!

December 3: Today was really cool.  Nottinghill vintage shopping day. It was once again Stephen, Marquielle, and I and we started our day by finally going to the little market street that is literally 3 minutes away from our flat. We had seen the pot roast before but never got to get it, but this time, we couldn’t resist and bought some together to share. We also each bought a brownie from the cutest baker ever. He was so smiley and nice that we all just swooned over him after buying the brownies. ^_^ We had to go back to the flat to get some bread to eat with the pot roast so we did that, but afterwards, we made our way to Portabello road in Nottinghill for some vintage shopping. I didn’t buy anything, but it was cool seeing all the antiques and stuff. I DID find some oooold Peter Rabbit books though. It was really heart wrenching seeing those.

December 4: The agenda for today was to check out Speaker’s corner, and then go to Camden for (my) final time of shopping. Marquielle and I decided to take the bus to Hyde Park where we got off and walked through the Christmas market at the Winter Wonderland. Midway through, it started to rain pretty hard so we ducked for cover under various booths. There were some cool things there, but I just didn’t feel like buying overpriced items…It took us a couple more minutes to walk to Speaker’s corner, but it was kind o f nice, even if it was cold and wet) strolling through the edge of the park. There were piles and piles of huge leaves on the grass, and even more fields of green grass still. I’m starting to wonder if the grass ever goes yellow here. We had started our day kind of late, so I wasn’t sure if there’d be anyone speaking at Speaker’s corner yet, but there were still quite a few people standing on their step stools and ladders doing their thing. If you don’t know, Speaker’s corner is a corner of Hyde Park that allows anyone to make informal public speeches on pretty much whatever they want. I had heard about this from several classmates and they all said it was a really cool experience. It was pretty funny because Marquielle and I think that we always bring the crowd to every place we go, and I saw this Asian guy standing on a little step ladder making a speech about Christianity so I stood from afar to record him. Not long after, more and more people started to gather around. What made me sad though was how people were treating him. The corner is supposed to allow for people to debate on whatever they like, but some people were just being complete idiots by making fun of the Asian guy’s accent and putting things in his face to try to mess him up. I felt terrible for him. If you’re reading this, you’ll probably want to watch my vlog of this once it’s up. It’ll be pretty far down the line though. Anyway, we left after about 10 minutes aaaaand decided to walk along Oxford Street for some shopping.  We had planned to go to Primark for (my) last time, but it was getting dark and cold so we just went home and cooked dinner. After dinner, it actually was way earlier than we thought, so we went to the comedy show at pub in the East End called The Princess Alice. It was just a series of random comedians who got the mic for 5 minutes to make the audience laugh. It was a pretty intimate atmosphere and everyone was really nice. I had gone half expecting to find Stephen and Kathy there, but they weren’t. HOWEVER, halfway through the second half of the show, they showed up!!! It was soooo cool bumping into them there. Since it was kind of Kathy’s last couple nights there, we went with her to the famous bagel shop near Brick Lane. It’s this amazing bagel shop that is open 24/7. We got the salted beef bagel which was amaaaazing. A perfect late night snack.

Vlog Time!

Soooo after I had gotten back from the Midsemester Break, I made a series of vlogs covering the trip, but I didn’t notice until Rosy pointed out that I had forgotten to make the last part of our trip!!! After getting back from my month of traveling, I’ve finally had time to sit down and start producing my vlogs again, and my first priority was getting that last part finished, so here it is.

I noticed while editing the vlog that I was a little loopy during the last two days, and this was probably from lack of sleep. We were on three night buses (as in sitting on a bus, overnight, for over 8 hours at a time) and it was a little hard to think about making quality vlogs at the time, so you’ll probably notice that the last part is not as coherent as my usual vlogs. Maybe. Enjoy!

Catching Up

Okay, my excuse for not posting for the majority of this month is that I was traveling around the world……

Fine. Just Europe, but it really feels like I’ve traveled around the world these past three weeks. Starting at the beginning of the month, I took a six day trip in Spain to Madrid and Barcelona, where I got my wallet stolen. I had class for one day and then the same day I got back, I left for another six day trip in Italy to Milan, Venice, Florence, and Rome. Thankfully, nothing was stolen on this trip….I got back during the week of Thanksgiving, so we had a beautifully filling American Thanksgiving meal with our St. Mary’s family and then left with Marquielle and Stephen on a night bus to Ireland! This was a shorter trip and we got back on Monday morning.

That is pretty much what was going on for me in the month of November in an extremely small nutshell. I WILL elaborate later. I’m trying to go through my *ahem* thousands (yes, thousands) of pictures that I’ve taken over all the trips to upload to Facebook first, followed by catching up on my *ahem* hours (yes, hours) of video clips for my vlog. There is a lot to do!

I now officially have less than three weeks left in London, and I’m not planning on traveling outside of the country anymore. I still want to take short day trips to other cities like Brighton or Cambridge, but that requires much less planning so I won’t worry about that just yet. I also still have two major papers left to write and one final for my British Life and Cultures class. Hopefully amongst all of this, I will have more time to keep this blog updated!

I finally saw Les Miserables!

I‘ve wanted to write this post ever since I saw the actual musical, so here I am.

Last Thursday I went with Marquielle and Rosy to see Les Miserable at Queen’s Theatre. We really just went on a whim to buy the tickets and hadn’t really expected great seats, but we ended getting some pretty decent views!  We sat on the very side of the Dress Circle, which is one tier up form the ground. From our view, we could see the pit right below the stage, which was SO cool. This experience was really special to me because I had played in the same musical in high school in the pit and it was really awesome seeing it done professionally. Ever actor and actress did a wonderful job (except for….one….)  and I got really into the story.

As I watched the story unfold, I began to realize how little I actually knew of the storyline. That’s pretty sad considering I had sat through countless rehearsals of the songs and PLAYED the songs back in high school. I was wowed by the swiftness with which the scene changes occurred and how flawless the entire musical was. I remember having to play the same part over and over while the scene changes occurred in high school. But, I do have to admit that the huge turning stage floor probably helped a lot for this production.

I would saw that my favorite singer was Jean Valjean. He had this deep penetrating voice, but an amazing falsetto as well. Even in his solo at the beginning of the second half was flawless to me. It definitely gave me chills. The character I was least satisfied with was Eponine. I thought she was a great singer, but her singing style just wasn’t right for this musical. She actually sounded a lot like Rihanna…so very pop-ish. Nevertheless, she did a great job acting still. And of course, the little boy stole the show when he made his first appearance. I honestly don’t know his name, but he had the cutest swagger when he sang his parts.

This experience really puts my entire experience in London into perspective. I’ve realized how much I’ve been exposed to different aspects of art in my life, and how little I’ve appreciated them. Looking back, I wish I had taken playing the the pit more seriously. I had NO idea that I was part of such a special production until now.  Being a part of such an art-filled society here has opened my eyes to everything I’ve been overlooking my entire life.

Secret

From here  on out, I will be performing a secret personal experiment. This post is an official statement of my secret personal experiment. There is no time frame for which I will carry out my experiment and you may never know what it is that I’m doing. Maybe if I remember to tell  you…

Wish me luck.

A reminder for myself: babp