A Week of Shopping

I've been on so many shopping trips since I've been back in Germany. The shopping is just better over here in Europe. I can guarantee all of you that if you were to come to Germany for a week, you would leave with a whole suitcase filled with new clothes. It's not expensive here and the stores are amazing. So hop on that plane and come visit me! I'll take any excuse for a good shopping spree.

Last weekend, my mom and I woke up early and headed off to downtown Kaiserslautern. We got there and went to the farmer's market first. We got our veggies and fruit for the week along with some fresh fish and treats from the Greek stand. I love walking around this farmer's market. It's beautiful and I was so upset that I forgot to bring my dad's camera. I wish I could post a picture here for you all to see! It's gorgeous. Anyway, after buying our food, we put it in the car and went back and sat at a little cafe outdoors. As we ate, we could hear the church bells ringing and people playing music on the street. It was great!

After eating we went straight to H&M. American H&Ms have nothing on European H&Ms. That's for sure! I walked inside and smiled. It's sad that a store made me smile but it did. My mom and I bought so many things. I love that we wear the same size shirts & sweaters. It makes shopping so much easier. After H&M we went to our favorite accessory stores on the same street. We bought so many scarves and I went a tad crazy on earrings. You can never have too many scarves or earrings, right?

Seeing as we were running low on cash, we started heading back to the car. On our way we picked up some fresh bakery goodies. Oh, it was a good feeling being home.

That was shopping trip numba uno.

Many mini shopping trips occurred throughout the week but I only write about the ones that count. The next worthy one happened last night. My mom and I went to the Neunkirchen mall.

This time our first trip was to C&A. They have the cheapest scarves and they are cuuute! Oh, and I've been wanting one of those sweater ponchos. I found one for 10 euro! You're probably thinking, "That's going to fall apart real fast." Maybe it will but for the moment, I look amazing in it and I'm satisfied. From C&A we went to a bunch of little stores and stopped for dinner at Nordsee. Love me some fish & chips! Our last big stop was, again, H&M. I have no idea how we find something new every time we walk into that place but we manage to. Every. Time. I mean, we were just there a week ago and I think we found more in the second trip than we did the first.

My mom made me promise to stop shopping after we checked out there. It was a sad moment. It felt like a break up but I'm surviving. On the way back to the parking garage we got distracted by the Eis Cafe sign. So we stopped and had the most amazing eis ever. I had an erdbeer becher and my mom had a hiesse schokolade becher. Hot chocolate and gelato combined? That's Heaven in a cup right thur. Mine was SO big. It had strawberries everywhere. And, yes, I ate them all. We both finished our desserts and we both felt like rolling back to the car. Walking just wasn't coming easy for us. We made it though.

I don't know when my next shopping trip will be but I hope it's sooner than later. I also hope I remember to bring the camera next time we go downtown. It really is a beautiful sight! Tomorrow we are off the Hitscherhof Farm Festival. I'll try to remember the camera this time. I'm sure it will be just as great.

I'm off to bed now. I'm to the point where I'm too tired to even think about getting ready for bed. Sad, I know. Goodnight all!

On the Corner of Bedford & Grove

Everyone has their show. The show they watch religiously. They're addicted. They watch it when they're sick, doing homework, or need background noise. The show they don't even need to give 100% of their attention to because they can already quote every episode. At least that's how it is for me. My show? No question about it, it's Friends.

I've been watching Friends a lot since I've been back from the States. Television here just isn't good and my parents haven't bought any good movies lately. Default solution: Friends. Even though I've watched these episodes ten or more times before, I still laugh. Oh, and I get more of the jokes now. Seriously, every time I watch an episode and I finally get a joke, I feel a tad bit smarter...even if they are dirty jokes, teehee.

Friends has been my show since sixth grade. No joke. Probably not a good thing for an eleven year old to be watching but it was love at first sight (literally). People say you shouldn't let kids watch these shows at such an impressionable age. But, honestly, does that really have an effect on anything? Let's analyze this.

My favorite character was Rachel. Who doesn't love Rachel? If you just answered with "Me," go away because this is about to get intense. Rachel: daddy's girl, worked in a coffee shop, horrible at sports, shopping addiction, easy going, can't manage money, can't do eyedrops, has problems with birds flying in her window, can't cook, searches endlessly for the Christmas presents, personal shopper, a pushover, spontaneous, queen of gossip, witchy (with a b) in high school, clueless at times, can't make decisions, pulls pranks, sucks at lying, falls for a nerd, gets pregnant, doesn't marry him, plans to move to the other side of the world, changes plans last minute, runs back to New York (because, after all, New York is where she is happiest).

Hmm, yeah. My kids will be watching Baby Einstein, Sesame Street, the Food Network, Myth Busters, the History Channel & the Discovery Channel. I'll introduce them to the goodness that is Friends when they are old. Like 60.

Oh, but look what I found! AH, I love this.

I Gotta Plan, Stan.

if i can major in psychology & minor in child development here:

get into the school psychology program here:

& work here:

that would be lovely

:)

 buuut if life happens to "get in the way" and I end up meeting my prince charming here:

   and we decide to get married here:

& live happily ever after here:

so be it.  <3

A Studious Face

"Don't take online classes," they said. "You'll never focus on your homework," they said. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person on the planet that has a problem staying focussed on homework anyway, right? I made the best of my distractions this week & took a picture of my favorite one from each day. Weird? Maybe. And maybe this was just another one of my distractions but whatever. It kept me entertained as I should have been reading about determinism, indeterminism, rationalism, empiricism, nativism, dualism, materialism...you get the gist.

I made the best brownies EVER!

Leo came to visit. Actually he was chasing a fly and I grabbed him.

I journeyed into the garage for a coke zero, YUM!

I went to the bakery & got a mini pretzel!

I took silly pictures with Momma :)

Rocky (the dog) brought me his tennis ball. He could play fetch for hours.

F.R.I.E.N.D.S. = best show ever!

Summer 2012

Hellllooo! It's been a while since I've written anything on here and I'm feeling kind of lazy so I'm still not going to write anything :). Instead I'll post some pictures that explain my last few weeks. Oh & for all of you out there going, "She didn't take these pictures!"...No, I didn't. But remember how I said I'm feeling kind of lazy? 

Finished my 3rd semester of college!

Road trip with Jan through Pennsylvania! 

Best thing about traffic jams? Making friends with the guy in the car next to you :)

One of my favorite places. Temple Square.

Museum of Modern Art: MoMA. "Where did you go?" "Momma."

Wedding dress shopping with Kayla! Love her!

Is it weird that a view of a bridge makes me feel safe & happy?

I danced on the stage with Allie :)

I learned to drive! 

Central Park. Leave me here all day & I'm content.

I braved the city alone. Twice. 

Newburgh Waterfront. So pretty & has the best gelato!

First time flying with a friend :) Off to NY!

City Creek Center. Loove this place!

Papa taught me the history of West Point.

I saw the Olympic Ski Jump in Park City, UT :)

I learned to sew a tie!

Biggest Plane I've ever been on!

I went here with my Papa. A lot. It's the best.

I took Jana (though she drove) to her first Dunkin' Donuts!

Labor Day @ Trophy Point = Amazing!

Loved the cobblestone street in Old Town Alexandria, VA

Labor Day sales at the Woodbury Commons!

Times Square at nighttime :)

Call Me Snow White

Because I look like her.

I'll start from the beginning.

I decided to go visit my best fraaaan, Amanda, in Utah before heading home to New York for the summer. Whenever we get together, it equals disaster. It's inevitable. It's fun but almost always has some sort of consequence. This time it was my hair. But we're not to that part of the story yet.

I get to Utah on Saturday morning and the first thing we do, after struggling to get the suitcase in the trunk (holy heaviness!) is go to lunch. Pizza, pizza, pizza. I could live on pizza. So goood! Then we head to City Creek for a day of shopping. I don't know what I love more, pizza or shopping. We hit all the best stores, of course.

I went crazy in H&M and Forever21 while Amanda tried on a million lipsticks in Sephora. Actually, not gonna lie, we both tried on lipsticks but only Amanda bought one. Ha, no. She bought one, returned it for another at a different mall and then returned that one two days later to City Creek. That's how that went. We're not cut out for bright red lips. This was only round one of shopping though. I'll leave out what happened at dinner time but it made my day. Poor Amanda broke out in hives! hehehe.

Then we went to dinner at Costa Vida. Sweet Pork Nachos. Another staple in my life. A yummy staple. From there we went to visit Amanda's grandma at rehab. She just had surgery and they load her up on the pain meds so it's always fun to talk to her after those lovely doses. This night took the cake though.

We get there and she's telling us how there's this amazingly cute boy named Jason working there. He would be perfect for Amanda because he's a bit short and, uhm, CUTE! So we are sitting in her room talking about our day and theres a knock at the door. In comes "Jason". Amanda's grandma says, "Hiiiii, Jason!" "Uh, I'm not Jason...I'm Taylor." "Oh, well this is my granddaughter and her friend." "Oh, that's nice. I'll come back later then." "Well don't you want to meet them?" "Alright, let's meet them then." ...awkward. So we went on to meet Taylor and run into him on our way out. Lovely.

Then we go to Walmart for the necessities of life. Wanna know what's by those necessities? Hair dye. So I get the lovely idea to have Amanda dye my hair. I pick out dark brown. Dark, dark brown. BROWN. We check out and head home.

Once home, Amanda reads the instructions like. 4 times. At least. We sit in the bathroom and she starts. I had little faith in her and say aloud, "I should have waited and had Jana do it." Well, that pushed a button and she says, "I'm going to do a freakin' amazing job! Forget Jana." This led to dye going everywhere. Everywhere. Including all down my hands and on Amanda's leg. The yellow towel? Now brown.

After the dye was in for a while, Amanda says, "How we washin' this out?" And I tell her in the bathtub. "That's cool," she says, "but we don't have a detachable shower nozzle." Awesome. So here we are with a pitcher pouring water over my head. Then me dunking my head in the bucket of water. It was a mess. The bathtub now has a brown tint and brown water splatters everywhere. It's great. After getting all the dye out, we dry my hair. There was no difference between the color of my wet hair and the color of my dry hair. It's that dark. Whoaaa.

It's starting to grow on me though. I'm a more beautiful Snow White. Especially with the new make-up we bought at City Creek : ).

P.S. Four people asked us why we didn't just rinse my hair out in the ginormous kitchen sink. We're dumb.

July 4th in New York!

My mom was nice and decided to buy me a ticket so I could spend the 4th at home with family & friends. I'm freakin' STOKED! I'm going to drag my aunt out of the house at 10am and not waste one minute of the day.

The Fourth of July has always been my favorite holiday to spend in New York. I love how Cornwall celebrates. There's something going on every minute of the whole day. It's impossible to be bored. Ever seen Gilmore Girls? Cornwall is Stars Hollow. It da bestest!

There's one part of the 4th that I'm not too much of a fan of. It's the parade. Ever since I was two, I sit there and hold onto my cousin. Loud noises are not my thing and the parade is filled with sirens, horns and gun shots. Awesome. For whatever reason, fireworks don't bother me but this parade? My Fourth of July Hell. But I'm even looking forward to that this year. It's been a while since the last time I saw it. Who knows...maybe I've manned up since then. We'll see.


I leave for New York at 2 in the morning next Tuesday. I get to New York around 3pm and I'm taking the bus to Grand Central & then a train from there to my town. I'm SCAAAAARED. Waaaah. I don't want to go alone. I'm just a baby. What if I get lost? Or miss my stop? Or die? This isn't okay. Hopefully I can remember everything Jana taught me when I was down there last. Hopefully. Fingers crossed.

I'm requesting pizza my first night back. I should probably let someone know so I actually get it. I'll do that later. Then it's the Fourth of July! Ahhh :) Then I plan on just relaxing and enjoying my time away from school (while keeping up with the work, of course). Somewhere in those two "relaxing" days, I plan on eating ice cream, going to Dunkin' Donuts (because Emily runs on Dunkin'), and reading. Yes, I plan on reading. There's never time to read at school. It's sad.

Wish me luck on my trip! And by "my trip" I'm referring to the horrible bus/train situation going on.