#2 - London calling

'Sup, my homies. Sorry for not having updated this blog for the last week, but can you guess where I was, can you, can you, can you...?

YES.

London, my dearest friends, London.

Now let me tell you, dearies, London is awesome. Really awesome. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly awesome it is, so I'll shut my mouth and just show you some pictures (and boy, did I take lots of pictures). Self-explanatory pictures will not be explained because well, they are self-explanatory. Roll the tape, baby.

Aah, you British people with your advertising in the tube stations...

Trafalgar Square, featuring the National Gallery...

...buses and rain...

... and a giant blue, well, cock.

Emma (newly found and also Bristol-going friend) bought this: It's a Doctor Who rubber bracelet. Doctor Who rubber bracelets are cool.

Camden Town. Fascinating place. And lots of interesting house decorations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCNHVMIYqiA

(Just putting this on here for Jonathan to see and be jealous *snaps in z formation* (these people kept walking in, so I censored their heads. You're welcome, random London people.))

The British Museum...

... and its awesome ceiling.

Have I mentioned I love England?! They had merch as well.

Oxford Circus. Yes, I did go shopping.

Piccadilly...

... Circus. Sorry, my camera granted me no better pictures, it doesn't have a panorama function (also just fyi this place looks better from the air anyways)

West End. It is...

...so...

...awesome.

I FREAKED OUT OKAY THIS IS SO COOL
I hope to be able to go there and actually see it live on stage. Might have to have a talk with my host mum... :)

Mum, thought you'd enjoy this ;)

Aaaand this is the last picture I took before my camera died. We didn't do much afterwards, just Covent Garden and the journey to our host families the next day... More info on my host family and the first days coming up!

See ya, lovelies. ♥♥♥

#1 - I'm going on an adventure!

 Hello, my dear human (and possibly non-human, you never know) life forms out there reading.

My name is Nicki, I am 16 years old, I am from Germany and the reason that this blog exists in the vast, infinite spaces of the Internet is that I will be living in England for the next four months.

It's the truth. I will be (temporarely) giving up my nice and familiar home and go live in a foreign town in a foreign country with a foreign family, visiting a foreign school and speaking a (yeah, maybe not that foreign) language. And you know what? It's gonna be totally awesome.

My new home town is called Bristol, a wonderful and wonderfully big city located in the south-west of England. It's the sixth biggest city in the UK, the famous artist Banksy is from there, they film Skins there (!!! love that show), it's got a incredibly big shopping mall, all the awesome stuff. I'm so looking forward to this city.

My exchange organisation Open Door International (which will be called ODI from now on because long words are bad. Bad bad long words.) has given me a wonderful and, as far as I can tell, really nice and caring host family. Two parents whose children have already left the house, two pet chinchillas, one Italian guest sister. They live in a suburb of Bristol, and everything seems really nice and exciting.

The best part? I'm leaving in TWO FREAKING DAYS. 'Excited beyond measure' does not even cover my emotions right now.

Also a really really really great thing: I won't be going straight to my host family, no sir. I will be spending five days in London before. And that is one of the things I'm most excited about.
For those of you who don't know it, London is one of my favourite cities in, like, EVER. I have wanted to go there for about four or five years now, and now I'm actually doing it. Eff yeah. <3

Extra awesome thing: I won't be going with my parents or anything. Nope, my trip will be with InterStudies (which is the English partner organisation of ODI) and thus with a lot of other international (!) students my age whom I will get along with perfectly, I'm sure of that. (I already had a preparation seminar one weekend in June and met lots of other ODI students who were going in other countries and I absolutely loved it and we had great fun and now imagine THAT in a foreign city with lots of things to see and stuff to do and workshops to have fun in and oh my god I'm so excited for this I can't even.)

Enough with the explanations and introductions, I will spend tomorrow packing all my stuff into one gigantic red suitcase (it's supposed to be 20 kg maximum weight on the plane, how am I ever going to manage that?!) and I hope you all have a fun time reading about my soon-to-come experiences in Her Majesty's Country.

'Tis gonna be an exciting time, my friends. ♥♥♥