Finishing up my Junior Year... kind of.

So right now I am sitting in my final class of my Junior year. In London. Jealous?

Don't be. Although I am done with classes 5 weeks before my friends back in the States, there is still a significant hurdle to jump before I can truly be done with my Junior year...

... in the form of 16,000 words.

Yeah. 6 papers. 16,000 total words. The best part? One paper is due May 3rd. And FIVE papers are due at 12:30 on May 6th. HA!

Normally, this would mean that I would not have a life for the next month or so. But there is a problem- I have some travel plans!

For the first week of April I will be out and about. I am spending the first couple days of my birthday month hiking through the Irish countryside, and after a short 2 day break, I will then be jet-setting off on my second trip to Scotland. However, the destination this time is Edinburgh. What a stressful life I'm living, right?! Haha!

Then, my family will be visiting me for a little more than a week later on in the month. We plan on spending 4 days in London, and then renting a car and traveling around the English countryside, and stopping in Wales. I'm so excited!

Although I didn't really leave the UK or Ireland for this trip (I planned on traveling around Europe), I feel like I have gotten so much more out of the experience since I did stay in the UK and explore all of these little towns and cities. I have learned so much about the culture and history of this little corner of the world. I feel like if I traveled Europe, I would have been rushed. I want to spend a couple weeks in Germany and Austria- not a weekend! I wish to drive through Italy someday, not just bop around from hostel to hostel for a week. Looking back, I was naive thinking that I could finish London AND Europe in five months. I haven't even finished seeing all of London yet, and I'm living here! How crazy is that?

Although I still have a couple places to go in England, I calculated it out, and with all my travel plans coming up in April, I have only 20 days to complete my 6 papers. So the heat is on. Not only do I need to write those 16,000 words, but I need to do research for 6 different topics. This is gonna be fun.

So, while everyone else is partying away their April, I will be stuck at my desk with my nose in a book or pressed against my computer screen, typing madly away. And while some people spend their 21st birthday bar hopping or clubbing, I will be writing about classical architecture and sculpture at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Food Politics, the Greenhouse Effect, the Carbon Cycle, Risk in Present Day Society, and Environmental Risk Theory. Yay.

So, if you need to find me and are in the UK, check my room. Unless I decide to no longer care. Then check the streets of London. I still have 28% of my list to complete.

Cheers!