I haven’t written for too long, but things came up.  I will explain the title and those things which came up later in the post.

On Friday, I went to the Science museum with Kaitlin, which was super cool.  I love fun museums, and we had a great time.  Then I went to my hotel by Stansted Airport, because my flight to Bratislava was early Saturday morning.  The hotel room was AMAZING.  This whole bed was for meeeee to sleep in, all by myself.  It was truly heavenly.  Plus, I had a wonderful dinner at one of the FOUR restaurants in the lobby, one of which had a wine tower.  It had 1,000 bottles of wine, and women went up on ropes to get your wine.  It was awesome.

 

Then on Saturday, I went to Bratislava! Seeing Tina and Rado was absolutely wonderful.  We spent the whole day walking all over the city, checking out all the tourist sights.  We spent a lot of time at the Old Town Hall, which houses a museum about the history of Bratislava.  We saw the three famous statues, and the little blue church, and lots of other very cool landmarks.  The buildings tend to be really cute there, with adorable colors and trimmings.  For lunch, we had traditional Slovakian food.  I got fried cheese and mulled wine…can’t go wrong with that!  We also went to a fantastic chocolate place where I got hot white chocolate with caramel.  It was fabulous.  For dinner, Rado made us spaghetti, and Tina and I watched Crazy, Stupid, Love.  It is such a good movie!! I adore Ryan Gosling.  I slept on the couch, but it was honestly one of the best nights’ sleep I’ve had in a while.

 

On Sunday, we went to the CASTLE! It was really cool, but lots of walking.  Then we walked to the Clock Museum.  Yes, I know I’m weird.  But I was really excited to see the all the clocks!! Then we walked up the Jewish street and back to the car.  We drove past Tina’s old dorm, and then left the city to find the Biofarm.  There, we ate garlic soup and the national dish of Slovakia, bryndzove halushky.  It is little dumpling cooked in sheep’s milk cheese and topped with bacon.  It was an absolutely wonderful meal.  Then we went back to their flat, looked at wedding pictures, and then watched Bridesmaids.  It was good, but not all it’s cracked up to be.

On Monday, I flew home.  That night, I saw Jersusalem, a play about religion in England.  My seat was CRAZY high up in the balcony.  Each row of chairs had a railing in front of it, and everyone leaned on the railings to be able to see the stage.  The acting was good, but I’m not sure I entirely understood the play.  Tuesday was a pretty normal day, nothing too exciting happened.

“Now here’s the part of our story that gets a little bit sad…”

Wednesday started out totally normal for me.  I had class in the morning, boring as usual.  Then I had personal training, showered and went to meet John Plotz at the tube station.  When we got back to the dorm, nearly everyone was gone, and the people who were left were crying in their rooms.  We were really confused until Chelsea told us that Alex Reinis had died that morning of meningitis.  Alex was the first person I met when I got here, so I took it pretty hard.  I immediately started cooking, so I fed John and Jimmy, then we went to the Wedding Singer again to see the other cast.  Transportation was not going our way, so we didn’t get there until intermission.  I couldn’t sleep at all that night.

On Thursday, we went to our first class, but I don’t remember it at all.  Then we just couldn’t handle another class, so Caroline, Hillary, Jimmy, and I went shopping at Oxford Circus (Topshop and Urban).  Then I went to the doctor’s office to get the pill to protect against meningitis. Hillary, Victoria, and I had our Thanksgiving dinner at Carluccio’s, then Hillary and I met John and Jimmy at the theatre, and we saw Wicked. It was all fine and dandy until “For Good” came on, at which point Hillary and I started sobbing hysterically, thinking about Alex. Again, couldn’t sleep that night.  Then Friday, Kaija and I slept in until around noon, and then I spent two hours attempting to force myself to run.  Eventually, I won, and I went for a run.  Honestly, Friday was a bit of a waste, I mostly just did homework.  I hung out with Caroline, Hillary, Victoria, Jimmy, and John for a while, and we went to Snog, and then the girls planned our trip to Bath.

Which leads me to Saturday.  We went to Bath!We started the day by going to the Christmas market, which was absolutely adorable, but packed with annoying people.  Then we found the Fashion Museum!  We all loved that.  We were going to go to the Jane Austen Center, but it was super expensive, so we skipped it.  We spent a few hours trying to find a place for lunch, and when we finally found one, it had a ridiculously long wait for food.  After lunch, we hit up the Roman Baths! They were awesome.  We returned to the Christmas market for caramel apples, and then caught the train home.  It was a lovely day, and it was great to get away from the dorm.  Today, I went to the gym, then shopped for about three hours.  We had our dorm-wide Thanksgiving dinner tonight, and I ate far too much, but it was wonderful.

This week has been extremely difficult.  Sweet Alex, you affected all of us so much.  Our time in London would not have been the same, and our lives would be totally different if we had not known you.  Thank you so much for being so awesome ❤