In Europe part 3: London

Getting to London was a bit of a task. I started from Amsterdam Centraal. I got on my train with no issues but something seemed off. It said it would not be going to the airport because of an accident. It did however tell me it was still going to Brussels Midi, which where I was catching my connection to London. 45 minutes into the trip they informed us that this train would not in fact be going to Brussels. It was going to stop in Rosendaal where we needed to get on a bus, drive three cities away to where we would get on a different train that would then go to Brussels -_-'''. The best news was that this was added about an hour on to our trip. Good think I had exactly an hour in Brussels... Long story short, I missed my train to London. Luckily, there was another Eurostar train to London only an hour later and it had spots available. I got on that train and arrived in London 2 hours later.

As far as London goes, I really enjoyed it. That first night I went to the Wellcome Museum to see their exhibit on Identity since it appealed to the linguistic-anthropologist in me. I was disappointed to learn that the website had posted the wrong dates for this exhibit. It had in fact ended a week earlier. I was happy however to see that the permanent exhibit was a small medical museum. This pleased the future doctor in me. The museum had two parts, one was a medical history museum and the other was a medical art museum. The medical art museum had a few neat items. They had a huge bookshelf packed full of a set of books that contained the complete human genome supposedly. It was pretty neat. I, myself, enjoyed the historical part more. I was especially intrigued by some of the non-medical objects they had such as the Chinese foot binding shoes. I knew that they were small but I didn't think that they were quite that small. I can't believe they could even fit a baby's foot into them.

The second day I went to the Camdem Markets. I really enjoyed this as it was pretty much a little city of alternative fashion. I bought two necklaces, a belt, and a bunch of panda stuff. I went to Cyberdog and was sad that I couldn't afford anything that I was in love with. It's pretty much a raver or cyber goth's dream store. I also found a few lolita stores. There was of course SaiSai and another smaller store that was a branch of SaiSai. I also saw a store called Angel Pretty (lol). I didn't actually go in though since at this point in time I had seen all the GLP products there were to see and was tired of being harrassed by store owners about any item I appeared to be mildly interested in. I just looking at it damnit! Let me shop in peace! Seriously though, I wish store owners at places like this would learn that this kind of behavior deters customers. They do it at cons too. It makes the customer uncomfortable and then they leave without buying stuff. Go ahead and greet them but it's much better to let them look and they will ask you if they need any help.

I also went to a lot of the tourist attractions in London. I visited Buckingham Palace, St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tower of London. I was disappointed by Buckingham Palace for the sole reason that the guards weren't in red nor wearing a furry black beehive hat. That's really the only reason I went there... St. Paul's Cathedral was probably interesting but I personally didn't feel like spending the 12.50 pounds to go inside. The outside was pretty but the tiny bit of the inside looked similar enough to the Notre Dame of Paris to feel like I was missing much. I did enjoy the Tower of London. It was easy to spend a few hours in it. While there wasn't anything that really stood out about it, it was nice to see a castle that wasn't over the top like the Palace of Versailles and the Louvre.

Assemble there everyone!

While the touristy things I did didn't really stand out in my trip, I did have a few interesting things happen. I did manage to find a pub called The Dolphin Bar about 5 minutes walk from my hotel. It was a little Irish pub with scrawny British guys serving beers at the bar. It was also a Thai food restaurant though. It had two or three Thai kids about my age running around bringing people their curry and satay. It was quite a shocking mix. The Thai food was good enough for me to eat there twice during my 6 day stay. The other thing that stood out in my trip was much less pleasant. While I was en route to Buckingham Palace, some British guy started talking to me. The fact that he walked up to me while I was walking stuck me as strange to begin with. He didn't come off as super creepy until about a minute later though. He asked if I would "take some time to go with him." I naively thought he meant he wanted to have a drink somewhere. I declined and added I was meeting friends that night and have stuff planned until I leave London. He asked if I "really won't get with him tonight" Still thinking he was talking about drinks, I said no, I really can't. He then asked if I was really that loyal to my boyfriend that I wouldn't get with him at least once. At that point I finally caught on to what he was insinuating. I angrily told him that I was definitely loyal to my boyfriend. He then said that he'd leave me be on my way. I was quite glad because if anything other than that had come out of his mouth, I would have gone into Bitchy American Mode (TM).

My lolita coordinate for the day ^ ^

My favorite thing I did in London wasn't actually in London at all. I took a bus trip out to Stonehenge. It was pretty amazing. The bus trip was about an hour and a half and made me quite sick, but it was very much worth it. Stonehenge itself is a tiny bit smaller than I had expected it to be. I had also expected the "busy highway" that ran next to it to be more than a two lane road. Our bus driver was also rather entertaining. He was constantly muttering about how he'd like to squash all the cars and pedestrians that stupidly run in front of his bus. He also was really good about pointing out points of interest during the drive such as the building where all of the dinner scenes in Harry Potter were filmed and Mary Poppins' House.

All in all London was great. I really enjoyed it despite it's tourist attractions not holding up to the awesomeness of Paris and Amstedam's. It's somewhere I'd really like to go back to .

In Europe Part 1: Paris & Brussels

I've been wandering around a few major cities in Europe this past week and a half. I started off with Paris. I have been to Paris a few times before however, this time was particularly awesome since my Dad was with me. We visited all the important sites: Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Versailles, Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame. We also made our way to a few other sites like Baby The Stars Shine Bright, Jim Morrison's grave, and The American Legion in Paris. Sadly our first few days there were rainy. I naturally used this as an excuse to buy myself a BTSSB umbrella... I also grabbed myself a pair of socks and a little bag.



Once the lack of umbrella problem was fixed, it stopped raining. I'm certainly not complaining about that. While there was a lot of new things discovered for my Dad in his first days in Europe, Paris provided me with no new culture shocking experiences other than French Pizza not being all terrible. I suppose the one thing that really did surprise me the gigantic crowd around the Mona Lisa at the Louvre.



Across from the Mona Lisa is a huge painting probably 100 times the size of the Mona Lisa. It was strange to see so many people flocking around such a small painting while behind them there was a great painting that most people wouldn't even be able to fit in their homes. While the paintings were great and all, I really prefered the statues and the basement where you could see some of the original infrastructure of the building dating back to 1100 AD if I remember correctly.


How Shocking!

From Paris we went to Brussels. I was rather surprised at how small the place was. We saw just about everything in one afternoon. The Grand Place was very beautiful, especially at night.



Brussels is also home to the best ice cream I have ever had. I had Speculoos, vanilla, and straciatella ice cream. While the vanilla was amazing, the fact that Speculoos ice cream had Speculoos in it made it my favorite. While straciatella is one of my favorite candies, I was disappointed by the ice cream because while it was still great, it just didn't compare to the other two ice creams or actually eating straciatella. We also made our way to the Manneken Pis which was sadly not dressed up. I heard a tour guide telling its group that when it is dressed up it pees beer instead of water as usual.



While in Brussels, we also went to Autoworld. While I'm not a big car person, it was a really neat little museum. Everything was in chronological order. As someone who alphabetizes anything with text, I appreciate order. They also had prototypes and working models of several more recent cars such as those adorable little smart cars you see everywhere (at least in Europe). They also had a few old carriages such as Napoleon's wedding carriage. It was quite an impressive collection of cars and motorcycles (among a few other vehicles). My personal favorite was the Amphibicar from the 1970's that you could actually use as a boat in addition to driving it on the road. I've seen the tour bus/boats that do this too, but I think the idea that this car being available to the general public was really neat. I wonder if you needed a boating license to go cruising in the water with it...



As someone who doesn't eat mussels or drink beer, I was quite fond of Brussels despite it not having a whole lot to do outside of bars and museums. It's a nice little place although the variety of languages being spoke can be confusing. I, myself, was never sure whether to speak to people in English or in French. I did get to see a man that was too drunk to move sleep in the middle of a somewhat busy street. I thought he was dead at first... Then the driver got out of his car and moved the drunk man to the sidewalk and continued on his way. I loved how none of this seemed to be anything but commonplace here. In part 2, I'll be talking about the second half of my trip through Europe to both Amsterdam and London.

1600 Pandas Manifestation in Besançon, France

One of the coolest things I've seen while here in France surprisingly took place right in the very town I'm staying in. I'm talking about the 1600 Pandas Manifestation that is taking place this year throughout France. As I'm sure we all know, the French love to go on strike. Everyone loves Pandas. Leave it to France to combine the two. On April 1st 2010, La Place de Revolution in Besak was the home of 1600 little panda statues and I loved it.



So many pandas!

The "Panda Strike" is meant to raise awareness for wildlife preservation. The 1600 pandas, which were all hand made with paper maché and sponge painted (also by hand), represent the estimated 1600 pandas remaining in the world today. This campaign is being put on all throughout France, obviously including the city of Besançon where I am living right now. It was definitely quite the sight to see.




Panda Love!

You were also able to buy the pandas at 50 euros each. While I really wanted to take home a panda, I really was curious if they had extra pandas to replace the ones that were bought... Now I didn't count them, but if someone buys one you don't have 1600 pandas anymore...I suppose we will never know. While I didn't buy a panda (I'm not even sure I'd have been able to return to the USA with it) I did buy a t shirt and a "I Panda my Planet" bracelet. Sadly, the bracelet is really just a ribbon, but it still claims to "panda" its planet.



These guards are the real reason I don't have a panda statue in my life right now.

In actuality, I really wanted to pull the "cute American girl" card to get a panda to take home. I never actually tried although I did get them to let Amy, another American girl, and I to take pictures in with the pandas. And while I'm currently writing from Brussels, and have spent the last three days in Paris, this event still stands out as one of the very best I've seen in my time here.



Come to the USA for me sometime little Pandas!

Il ne reste que 1600 pandas dans le monde. Moi inclus!

Gotta Catch 'em All...

I find it strange how much I like to collect things. I don't think I would ever call it a hobby or anything, however I've been coming to terms with the fact that I almost subconsciously collect things. Even as a kid, I enjoyed my coin collection, was jealous that my sister had a stamp collection, and had quite the Pokemon card collection too (I know I was and probably still am quite the melvin). Thinking back to it though, there were several occasions where I was offered great rare cards if I would have been willing to part with several of my cards. It was probably quite stupid to say no, but I couldn't bare to get rid of cards that I only had one of. I've noticed that this is something that has carried over into my Magic playing. On occasion I've taken a crappy rare over an okay common simply because I didn't have that one yet. I originally started playing Magic to actually play. While playing is still a lot of fun, I don't buy packs so I can build decks, I build them in hopes for something new. You can imagine my disappointment when I pulled two of the same rares at this last pre-release. They were pretty sweet rares, but I didn't care... I wanted something new... I'm glad I've got some sort of self control or this would carry over into lolita... I'm pretty sure I'm getting at least one set of eyes rolling at that statement but I'm serious. Every time I see cheap brand on EGL_Comm_Sales I want to buy it just so I can have it. It doesn't even matter if I like it or not. I'm trying to employ that whole "Only buy it if you LOVE it" rule, but it's hard.

My studying in France has brought along a new bump in the road as far as collecting goes. Not only do I want to buy every book that sounds even remotely interesting, I have also come across easter eggs with Hello Kitty figures in them. I am always disappointed to be unable to find decent reading material in French while in the States but really when it comes down to it, I realize I don't want to read shit in French... Reading in French feels like work, whether it's easy or not.

After opening my first box of Hello Kitty eggs, I thought to myself how I'm in a way lucky to not be studying in Japan instead. Gashapon toys would probably be my weakness. As if readily available lolita clothing wouldn't have been a big enough drain on my wallet. There were 24 different Hello Kitty figurines to collect inside these little chocolate eggs. If Monoprix hadn't sold out of them, I'm sure I'd have more than 15 figures right now... I did however see the Transformers version of the eggs today... I walked away though... I've never even watched Transformers, but something about finding Megatron inside an egg was just appealing.


Picture very much related. (It's my Hello Kitty Army. Be scared.)

My Name is Kei and I am a Brand-Addict.

I've recently lucked into being able to get a hold of one of my three dream dresses. Two of them are the red and black colorways of AatP's Vampire Requiem short JSK's so I probably won't be lucking into them anytime soon without dropping a few hundred dollars each. Really this post is just a look what I've got post. No harm in that though right?

I'll start with my trip to Paris back in January. I went to Baby the Stars Shine Bright. It was my second time there but that didn't take away from the awesome. There were quite a few people there this time which wasn't the case last time. I guess I'm glad to see it's doing better than the one in San Fran. I tried on a few things and kind of regret not buying the Castle of Nightmare skirt in red and the Vampire Requiem bag... That would have kept me from buying all the other stuff I got. I'm not too sure I'm happy with that compromise, but regardless I am happy to have gotten what I got.



These shoes were my big purchase of the day. I'm quite happy to have them. I can't wait to wear them since I haven't been able to with all the rain and snow here.



I was kind of torn on whether or not to get this. I bought another t-shirt style cutsew from Alice and the Pirates a while back and really liked it. I really like the shirt but I guess I just feel that the stripes are unflattering. I've been debating on whether or not to go ahead and wear it out or try to sell it on egl_comm_sales.



These were my pseudo-responsible purchases. I bought the tote for my groceries and to take my dinner materials to the kitchen and back. I've used it a lot but I kind of regret not getting a black tote instead. I bought the cup with the intention of using it for tea or hot chocolate but I didn't want to dirty it T_T. It's currently housing my pens and pencils.


These were my obligatory sock purchases. I could never justify spending so much on socks online but somehow I can't say no when I see them in person. I bought the Black and White and the Black and Grey versions of the Stripes and Trumps socks. They were after all an item I had to have once I saw them online. The second pair is very sparkly. The sparkly sock they have are kind of itchy, but they are cute nonetheless. I wear them with stocking under them. While I could always go bankrupt on brand, that is all I bought that day. However, I did manage to get a hold of this parka off the egl_comm_sales around the same time.



I had long wanted the cutsew version of this parka. My boyfriend got me the Marine Rose Skirt lucky pack for my birthday this year and while I was happy to have gotten the cutsew at all, I got the white version. This kind of makes up for it though ^ ^. Too bad everything I've ordered since I left goes to my house in the US... Lastly, I would like to talk about my dream dress.



I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. I was quite disappointed when I found it to be sold out. I was even more disappointed when I found out how popular it was. Popularity often means money and difficulty in lolita so I had sort of given up hope. I didn't have $300 dollars to spend on it the one time when I saw it on EGL_comm_sales. It was snatched up fast too. I put out a want to buy and everything. No luck. I saw a girl wearing it at the Otakon this year. I offered to pretty much buy it off her back. She said no and told me how it was her dream dress too. Lucky girl. I ended up picking up the pink version of the dress at the Otakon the same year. As happy as I was to have it, I'm a gothic lolita and haven't actually worn it yet. I had given up until I bought a copy of Baby the Stars Shine Bright's Fall and Winter catalogue. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it in there. Since that moment I checked for new items many times a day on their website. The moment it showed up I almost couldn't believe it. I debated over the size and decided I should get the M size over the S size and then bought it. They shipped it right away. I was quite pleased. The package arrived at my house a few days ago in the US. My mother opened it and sent me an email about a surprise. I knew there was a fair at the moment but didn't expect to receive anything since the dress was just under the limit. I was shocked to have received not only the fair item but a calendar and diary as well.





Unfortunately, I'll be taking another trip to Paris in about a month. I say unfortunately because I'm kind of low on cash since I can't work in France. I'm hoping that there isn't anything expensive that I have to have when I go visit. I'd like to have some money left when I get back home... I guess that's what I've got a job for though...

Breaking the Silence

It's been quite some time since I've done an actual blog post. I'm currently studying in France and it's been quite the experience so far. I don't really know where I want to start, but it only seems logical to start at the beginning.

I got here on the 11th. Aside from some minor annoyances caused the other Americans not wanting to take my advice once we got to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris the trip to the Gare de Lyon cost a bit more than I would have liked it too. It also took 3 times as long as my methods but that's not what this is about, however, it took me 3 1/2 hours to get to JFK by car and then 8 hours to get to CDG by plane so I wanted to minimize any further travel time as much as possible... I suppose this is where I will start complaining about my program through SUNY New Paltz. While I was still in the US, their study abroad office was just inches above useless. I only say inches above because I did actually get the papers I needed in time, but with absolutely no time to spare. I drove 2 1/2 hours to their campus for the 3 hour orientation. That is something I regret somewhat. While sitting there for 3 hours with nothing to show for it, the other Americans told me more in 5 minutes than I had found out from SUNY New Paltz during the previous months. They weren't even able to provide us with an address where we would be staying before we left. As a matter of fact they told us to ask a cab driver to take us to Batiment Stendahl, they should know where it is. No address. No description. Luckily my cab driver knew how to get here but the other Americans weren't as lucky which tacked and additional few euros on to their trip. Once we got their, the people at that building weren't even sure who we were. It took some explaining before they finally figured that we must be the people on some tiny list they had. I'll spare you the nightmare that getting my visa was for now but getting here was a bit of a nightmare.

After going through two weeks of orientation to learn about the town we had to take a placement test at the CLA. The test consisted of three parts: Written comprehension and expression (grammar was also in this section), oral comprehension, and an interview. From this test they would place you in either level A,B1,B2,C1, or C1+. The test isn't too difficult. I felt that I did poorly on the interview out of some slight nervousness. I also know I made some mistakes on the oral comprehension part due to a confusing answer sheet. Too bad, so sad though. I ended up in B2. More specifically B2.5. I was hoping for C1 and just missed it but I think that everything turned out fine since I ended up with mostly awesome teachers which doesn't seem to be everyone's luck. The classes as a whole seem to be quite easy. Oral comprehension always seemed to be my weak point though, which is what I think kept me from getting into C1. While I can understand people perfectly fine, I can't understand recorded speech to save my life. I suppose that's why I'm here though. If it weren't for that I may have tried to go up to C1. While they say that changing levels is uncommon, there have been many people who have switched up and down levels. Our class had at least 3 switch out and 3 people switch in. I suppose I've decided to let myself enjoy the break though. I'm used to working on top of a much more busy schedule than I have now. As long as New Paltz doesn't manage to screw up putting the grades into my transcript correctly, all will be well. I don't have my fingers crossed though. Anyway, I suppose that's the beginning. I'll try to make this a more regular thing...

Big Five Personality Test

I took a personality test that seemed kind of interesting (and truthful) Enjoy!

I'm a O0-C74-E9-A2-N22 Big Five!!