To England....and Beyond!!!

those famous telephone boxes!

the countryside

my cousin and uncle!!! (ruth and john)

me and joyce :) she's so cool

the winndddmillll....hehe creepy ;)

Hello to family and friends, greetings from the UK!

I’M NOW IN....ENGLAND! It’s dead exciting and the beautiful accents and countryside and being in Blackpool (yes belle....Blackpool!! argh!) is somewhat overwhelming. I’m off to Scotland tomorrow and I’m not going to have time to answer your lovely emails till after I come back so I thought I’d write this quick blog post just to keep you up to date. So far I’ve been to Lancaster, Blackpool, the Lake District and all around Lancashire and St. Annes in Lytham which is where I’m staying with my ‘aunty’ (family friend) Joyce (she’s awesome...the coolest over 70 year old I’ve ever met). My actual uncle John also got in contact when he heard I was here so I’ve met him and two of my cousins which is just incredible coz I didn’t think I’d get to meet any of my family. But it turns out they really wanted to see me and John is really lovely. Generosity and kindness just comes so naturally to him and he’s treated me to some awesome pub lunches and showed me around the beautiful green rolling hills and countryside that surrounds the place I’m staying in. It feels very special to be in the place and see the houses where my Dad lived and grew up and where my parents came when they were here with me when I was one.

It has been incredible weather, today being another sunny blue sky day, it should be raining, but I’m certainly not complaining, hopefully it’ll hold out for Scotland. I’m really having a fantastic time, everyone speaking English is fantastic and I love watching the English telly :)

To everyone at home, I love and miss you all and really hope that life is great, if not then pop over to England and I’ll try and cheer you up :D hehe.

Hugs and giraffesSofiexoxoox

Paris Pics (batteries ran out second day)

hall of mirrors

the gardens

and again

Nortre Dame

k. so the rest of the photos are gonna have to wait till i come back :( coz soph and eleanor have them.

Paris

Hi Everyone!

Just a short blog and some pictures to let you know what I’ve been up to :) I’m going to the UK on Tuesday and have been here for 3 months. STILL cannot believe it really. It’s been a full house the last couple of weeks with me, Helmut, Eva, Eleanor, Sophie, Rach, Jessie, and of course Octaveo all together. Though recently Jessie has moved out coz she finally found a place to live in Heidelberg, which is where she’ll be studying for three years. The biggest thing that’s happened is we (me, Eleanor and Soph) went to Paris for three and a half days! J It was beautiful, and full of American tourists with their unfortunate accents. There were some people from England though, which I followed around and grinned like an insane person when I heard them. (Berri, I really do need you to come and restrain me in UK, pretty pleasseee?).

So, the checklist for Paris - We stayed at a bed and breakfast and had an amazing breakfast every morning and the place was lovely. We visited the Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, Versailles (inside (incredible and completely overwhelming) and the gardens - classical music playing through speakers hidden in the hedges, it felt like I was in Pride and Prejudice, ok the gardens were pretty different from ‘English’ ones but still very grand, very big, very gorgeous), La Sainte Chapelle, tunnel where Diana was killed :( We visited The Louvre but didn’t get nearly as much time as I would have liked. It was pretty amazing though, the only disappointment being the Mona Lisa, I dunno if anyone has seen Madeleine, but in one episode they go to the Louvre and the Mona Lisa gets stolen and they find the culprit and all is great. Only, the ML is HUGE in Madeleine and when I finally got to the room where it’s displayed in all its ‘glory’ with a guard and lots of Asian tourists around taking photos of themselves with it I stopped dead in my tracks coz it’s tiny. I LOLed and said “it’s TINY!”....Eleanor said “yes, but we all knew that”....i tried to explain Madeleine and how awesome it was in that, really should have just kept my mouth shut hah :( There were lots of other things amazing there though and the ML outrage was soon overcome by all the other beautiful and old and famous paintings, sculptures and rooms..

Other stuff...We went Heidelberg to check out the castle there, went on an overnight hiking trip in France where we were up quite high and lots of lovely views. Been on some other walks with randoms to check out even more castles and forests and places :) Went to the border of Switzerland yesterday, but it was the town next to it we were looking at, it was raining though and a little depressing as we spent over 10 hours on the trains getting there and back.

Sorry none of that is in much detail but I know you’re all busy and I actually want to be able to tell everyone someone new when I come back. I really love you all so much, cannot believe I’m off to the UK tomorrow! Missing you all, thanks for the emails/letters etc people have sent, they’ve made it so much easier to be in a strange country. Hugs and giraffes,

Sofie xoxox