Ch'ti un jour, Ch'ti toujours

Hey y'all,

So today has been busy for once. I got up, ran, and then went and dropped off a cd at one of my schools. It was sweet to see all of the teachers and students again. I'd be walking down the hallway and all of the sudden hear a kid yell "hello, Sarah!" and it just made me melt. 

Anyways, after that I came home, ate lunch and then headed out to tutor for the last time. 

After all of that was done, I went to the bookstore and bought the coolest souvenir. This mug: 

The big red letters spell out Ch'ti, which I've already told y'all about - it's the name for the people in the Nord-Pas de Calais region. My favorite part of the mug is that it says "Ch'ti un jour, Ch'ti toujours" which essentially means "once a Ch'ti, always a Ch'ti." I loved it. 

We're heading to Paris tomorrow and Sunday for once last farewell and I'm so excited (for Paris, not the farewell.)

Luv,

Sarah

Beffrois de Lille

Hey y'all,

Lille has two belfries. One in Place du Général de Gaulle and one next to the Hôtel de Ville (which is basically the mayor's office.)

This is the first one

This is the second one

I think the first one is much prettier than the second one, plus it's much more centrally located. I recently found out that you can climb up the second beffroi, so of course I was all up on that.

We went last Saturday and I really enjoyed it. It took about 15 minutes to go up the steps. There were 4-5 places on the way up where you could stop and read some of the history of the city and surrounding area.

Here are a few pictures I snapped while up there.

On one of the steps, they had a quote from Victor Hugo that says "The horizon underlines infinity.'

Y'all know how I feel about nice clouds...

Right next to the belfry is the Porte de Paris - essentially just a pretty arch and roundabout.

You can see the other belfry in the picture below.

Later that night, there was a concert called Rock'n'Lille in Place de la République, just around the corner from where I live. Basically, there was a rock band in front of the fine art museum and people where doing some sort of swing to it. Pretty fun to watch. I wish it had been a little warmer though.

Don't forget!

- Check out my post entitled "Little Message"! 

- Check out my personal page for the Chicago Marathon and consider helping me reach my fundraising goal! 136 days until the big day! 

See y'all soon

Luv,

Sarah 

'Ello Poppet

Hey y'all,

I've been avoiding putting off this post on London just because I did SO much in London and have tons to talk about. But who am I kidding? It's not like I have a billion things to do at the moment... (That's not sarcasm. I literally have zero agenda. Refreshing)

Anyways, in my previous London post, I left off where I was chilling in various coffee shops. At 9:30, the store where I had to pick up my LondonPass opened, and I was ready to roam. If you're ever in London, I highly recommend getting the LondonPass. First of all, London is EXPENSIVE. Goodness. The LondonPass was 47 pounds, I think. I upgraded and got the London travel pass for 56 pounds because it included a free tube pass (and one trip on the tube costs 4.50 pounds. I'm not even joking.) Basically, the LondonPass lets you get into almost everywhere for free. I knew I wanted to go to the Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey, and the prices for those three places were well over 47 pounds in total.

So I hopped the tube over to the Tower of London.

Here's part of the tower of London with the famous Tower bridge in the background. Learned something new. This bridge is in fact called Tower bridge and not London bridge. The real London bridge is the next bridge over to the west and much less impressive. 

I did a tour with one of the Yeomen Warders or "Beefeaters". Homeboy was hilarious.  I stupidly didn't take a picture of him, but here's what they look like. 

This was the part of the tower of London where they housed the crown jewels. Very impressive. 

I visited the Tower of London with my fam when David studied abroad in London when I was an unfortunate sophomore in high school (no, seriously), but it was nice to go back after taking more history classes and appreciate the historical significance of all of it. 

This was probably my favorite part. This is called "Traitor's Gate", which is a water entrance into the tower. Many a prisoner were lead in this way, including Anne Boleyn. I also saw where she lost her head. 

After the Tower of London, I grabbed a sandwich and hiked twenty minutes over to St. Paul's Cathedral. I ate my sandwich in a nice little park next to the Cathedral. Not a bad view.

St. Paul's Cathedral was really neat. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside though, so that was a downer. The audio guides were included in the entry fee (phew), which I thoroughly enjoyed. I started getting tired and I think I dozed off a tad in the pew, but I decided in order to wake myself up, I should naturally climb about 600 stairs to the top of the dome. 

Anyways, I hiked up to the whispering chamber, which is part of the dome. You can stand on one side and whisper something into the wall, and someone on the other side of the dome can hear it. It was wild. I was alone, so I just listened to other people's whispers. Pretty amusing. 

From the whispering chamber, I went up to the top of the dome and got to see all of London. 

Here's the park where I ate lunch. 

The sky had storm clouds on and off all day, but it only drizzled a little bit, fortunately. 

The problem with traveling alone is that you don't have friends to take your pictures. Womp womp womp.

Selfie central!

Here's the front of St. Paul's. 

After St. Paul's, at about 2pm, is when fatigue really started to hit me again. I had planned on walking the 30 minutes from St. Paul's to Westminster Abbey, but about 5 minutes into that, I decided to mind the gap and jump on the tube. A wonderful decision.

Made it over to Westminster Abbey, and of course, I loved that one too. It was neat to see the pictures of Kate and William's marriage in the Abbey and then walk through it. Loved it. It was also really cool to see all the kings' and queens' tombs. The idea of royalty fascinates me. 

Just like St. Paul's, photography was not allowed. Bum city. I did get to see the coronation chair which dates back to the 1300s. Too wild. 

You can see the storm clouds over Westminster Abbey. I took this right before I went in for my tour.

And one hour later, clear skies. Weird. 

I couldn't get enough of the blue skies and clouds. 

Right next to Westminster Abbey are the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, which I'd already seen about 10 hours earlier, but I still snapped some more pictures. 

More selfie strugs. 

And again. I'm a sucker for a nice cloud. 

At this point, I was dying of fatigue. It was only about 5pm and I was meeting up with friends at 8pm. Well, with my LondonPass, I could take a boat tour of the Thames for free. So I did that. No pictures from that, unfortunately. I was wiped out. 

I kind of wandered around for the next two hours and then finally met up with two of my sorority sisters from Wake. One of them is getting her Master's at King's College and the other was in London for a conference. We met up and went to a couple pubs. 

It was really good to see them and I was sad to have to leave!

Anyways, I hopped on the tube back over to Victoria Station and caught my bus back to Lille at 11:30pm. I arrived in Lille right on schedule at 6am...went home and proceeded to sleep for the next six hours. Oof.

Anyways, that was my London trip in a nutshell.

Don't forget to keep checking my post entitled "Little message"! I update it with a picture everyday!

Luv,

Sarah 

Little message - updated 6/3

Hey y'all,
This is the first of a few installments of something I've been compiling throughout the year.
Don't ask questions. It'll all come together at the end.

Eiffel Tower -- Paris, France 

Canals -- Amsterdam, The Netherlands 

Top of the belfry -- Dunkirk, France 

Galway City, Ireland

High Cathedral of St. Peter -- Cologne, Germany 

Gravensteen (Castle of the Count) -- Gent, Belgium

Sagrada Familia -- Barcelona, Spain 

Temple Bar -- Dublin, Ireland

Big Ben -- London, England 

See ya soon! Brussels, Belgium 

Luv,

Sarah 

Cheerio

Hey y'all,

So I arrived in London this morning at approximately 4:45. OOF. I slept for about four hours on the bus which is actually better than what I expected.

My bus from Lille to London stopped at Calais in northern France where we hopped on the Chunnel. However, before that, we had to get off the bus, go through French customs, get back on the bus, get back off the bus, go through British customs, and THEN wait an hour until the Chunnel opened up. What a wild ride. 

In my experience with British customs (albeit this is only the second time I remember) - they are a huge pain in the rear. Out of about thirty people on the bus, I was one of two non Europeans. So I waited in line for British customs, got to the front of the line and was then given a paper to fill out for foreigners. Then I had to get back in line. On the form you had to fill out your address in the UK. I clearly couldn't do that because I'm not even staying 24 hours. I had to explain all of this to the rude British customs lady. I told her it saved me from paying for a hotel. She did not seem to think it was a good idea. She said "well I need to see your bus ticket back for tomorrow." I responded "well I left it in the bus because I was told to only bring my passport into the office." And you know what? She made me go back out and get that ticket. What a pain. It was 2am and I was not having it.

Anyways, they finally deemed me fit to enter this country so alas here I am. Phew.

Maybe I'm uneducated on the Chunnel, but I assumed there was just a highway under water that we would drive on. Silly Sarah. Our huge greyhound size bus drove straight into a train carriage and we rode on the bus on a train all the way to the UK. That was wild. 

Below is a view of the bus driving onto our carriage.

 

I'm not going to lie. The Chunnel rode like a dream.

I spent approximately the next two hours after arriving walking around and exploring a little. Even at 5am, there were a lot of people out and it was light outside.

I headed down to Buckingham Palace to see Liz and then to the river

Thames and snapped some photos.

Since then, I've been bouncing back and forth between coffee shops waiting for the city to wake up so I can go see the likes of the Tower of London, St. Paul's cathedral and Westminster abbey.

That's all for now, folks.

Luv,

Sarah 

Up up up

Hey y'all,

I'm came across this incredible video the other day about a high school kid who was diagnosed with cancer. It's about 20 minutes long, but I promise after the first 5, you won't want to stop watching.

My favorite quote: "I want to be remembered as a kid who went down fighting...and didn't really lose."

I consider myself a pretty unemotional person, but after watching this video, I had a nice long cry.

Check it out.

Luv,
Sarah

Petite visite à Ghent

Hey y'all,

On Monday, I went on a roadtrip to Ghent, Belgium. I had already been with my parents, but we only spent about two hours there, plus it was rainy and foggy that day. Needless to say, I was excited to go back and explore the city a little more. It was only an hour car ride from Lille, so that was great. I've found that since I ride in a car MAYBE once a month, I get easily car sick now. Hopefully that'll go away once I get back to America.

Anyways, our first stop in Ghent was the belfry. When I went with my parents, we didn't have time to hike up to the top, so I was more than willing to throw down four euros to walk up. I loved it. It was cloudy, but we could still see so much of the city.

I love those orange rooftops.

Here's a picture of the belfry we climbed. 

Fun fact. I just found out that you can climb the belfry here in Lille. I'm all over it. 

Ghent is basically a smaller version of Bruges, Belgium. There are canals running all throughout the city. 

Our final stop was the castle in Ghent. My dad and I were disappointed that we didn't have time when we were in Ghent to go to the castle, so I was glad to get there. It was built in 1180 by the Count of Flanders. It wasn't incredibly overwhelming, but definitely neat to visit. 

Anyways, my roommate Emily has left me for McDonald's, free public restrooms, and Barack Obama (America), but fortunately I've got a long laundry list of things I have to do (accounts to close, trains to book, etc.) and then a list of things I want to do before I leave. First on the second list- LONDON. Cannot wait. If I make it to a Starbucks tomorrow (which let's be honest, I inevitably will...) I will post a picture or two. If not, full details when I get back. 

Cheers, folks. 

Luv,

Sarah