Fall

oh my goodness, this is so late but thanks so so much to everyone who donated to the Walk to Cure Diabetes!!! I raised more then my personal goal! A few of my friends walked and they each even donated money too! It was so great. here are some pics of the walk

My lovely friends!

Last weekend we had a three day weekend for Columbus Day. Sarah Moore, Dasha, and I went to Sarah Moore's house in Pennsylvania for 2 day. Sarah's family is really nice and we had a lot of fun. However, we mostly went because I wanted to go to a corn maze and Sarah lives near Amish country and they have those.
It was awesome. So what you do is, you wonder through this maze looking for mailboxes with map pieces in it and once you get all the pieces of the map, youre done and you can leave. Of course you can leave without getting all the pieces but thats like giving up and we did not do that. It look two whole hours. And it was a lot hotter then we thought it would be in October.

Our completed map!

This is how many hours we were in the maze. Not peace. 

And then here is the most adorable picture ever of the three of us in Sarah's back yard

WALK!!

Hey everyone!
The Walk to Cure Diabetes is THIS Sunday!!!
Last year, we had an amazing time. We raised a lot of money and this year we hope to raise even more.
We just found out that our group, Team Teen NYC, was the group with the MOST type 1 diabetics!
I know that you all know how important this walk is to me. I've had type 1 diabetes for 11 years now, which is more than half my life :( I've always enjoyed raising money for the important research that JDRF does.
I know its short notice, but I would really love it if you could each donate to our team.
This is the link
http://walk.jdrf.org/walker.cfm?id=87818027


Thank you so much for all your support!
Love,
Rachel

Room

Hi!
So this is just a quick post with some pictures of the room I'm living in now. I'm living in a dorm called Greenwich Hotel. Its in the West Village. I lived here last year. Sarah Moore is my roommate again because she is great. Dasha is living in the other bedroom in our suite with a girl named Yael. We met her when we all moved in and we all like her a lot. So. Pictures.

This is my bed. On the wall are a lot of postcards from Europe and a painting my mommy made for me. I bought the rug at Urban Outfitters for $10!

Our room is really skinny. That is Sarah's desk to the right, mine is at the foot of the bed. We moved that garment rack because is was blocking the window.

My desk and bed plus the corner of Sarah's bed (and Sarah's knee!) Taken from the doorway.

Kitchen. Its a little messy usually because we don't have a lot of counter space and we don't have a dishwasher and none of us have meal plans. I've been cooking a lot. Its fun. 

Another view of the kitchen, including our awesome shelving unit (thanks, Randy!) and spice rack!

This is our well decorated common room/dining

Ok this took forever, so I'm going to go now :D

Busy

Hi everyone. I don't have a lot of time right now (I'm in between student teaching and Spanish ) but I just wanted to check in and tell everyone that I've been having a great time back in NYC. However, I have been super busy. I thought I would have a nice relaxing week before classes but I had to do so many unexpected things for student teaching. Then classes and work started so I've really had no time to sit and type this out. I'll make another post soon with some pics of the new room and a bit about my classes. Is there anything else anyone wants to know about? Just let me know, comment or whatever. Ok time to go! Bye!

Summer

Well I made it home from Madrid... Sorry for the lack of blog.. But I've seen most of you over the summer. In case you didn't know... I spent the summer in Augusta. I babysat the cutest baby ever and tutored the smartest 5 year old ever. I went to Rebecca and Jed's med school graduation and visited Joe in florida. Joe also visited me in Augusta and so did Delany. Recently my mom rented out a room to a really nice MCG med student, so that's cool.
I am writing this from my iPhone in the Augusta airport. I'm flying back to new York today. The summer went by so fast! My flight was delayed and I had to reschedule my connecting flight.
More later!

Last day in Madrid

Hi everyone!
I had my last final this morning, picked up my last paycheck from my job and in a few hours I am going to my last dinner in Madrid with a bunch of friends from school. I'm almost completely packed and I'm heading to the airport late tonight.
Some flight information in case anyone wants to know:
Flight LH 4417 from Madrid to Frankfurt leaves at 6:20
Flight LH 444 from Frankfurt to Atlanta  leaves at 12:15 and gets into Atlanta at 4:25 EST.

See you all soon!

Since Spring Break...

I've been pretty busy since spring break... but not with anything super exciting.
The weather has been pretty amazing most days. I've had a ton of picnics in El Parque del Buen Retiro. My classes have been going well but I've had a lot of tests, presentations and paper. And now we are at the last week of classes!

A few travelling highlights.
The school took us on an optional day-trip to Toledo. It was pretty cute. We saw a cathedral, synagogues and lots of El Greco paintings. it was a pretty short trip but it was free and fun.

Three friends and I went to Barcelona last weekend. We took a bus there and stayed in a hostel for one night and then flew back on a real airline (not a crappy discount one, but it was still really cheap)
We saw a lot of Gaudí architecture, like Park Guell and Sagrada Familia, the church that they have been building for over 100 years. It was all really interesting.
We also went to the beach and I swam in the Mediterranean Sea!

well thats about it.
Home in 11 days!

Spring Break, longest blog ever

Hello everyone!
I've been back in Madrid since Friday. Its been so nice to just sleep! My spring break was amazing. It really was the trip of a lifetime. I saw so many great things and had so much fun with everyone I traveled with. Now I'll tell you about it, mostly with pictures!

LONDON
We arrived in London kinda late and checked into our hostel. It turned out to be the worst hostel we stayed in during the trip but it still wasn't that bad. It was crowded. However, we could walk to the city center and explore London easily. On our walk, towards the Thames River, we passed Charlie Chaplin's house

and Big Ben/Parliament

and lots of red phone booths

We went to Trafalgar Square and climbed this monument

We walked around London all day. Its very old and charming. We went to the National Gallery Museum, The Tate Modern, and the National Portrait Gallery (all the museums are free in London!). At the National Gallery, I saw a painting by Valezques that I may write a paper about for my art class, lots of Monet, Van Gogh and Renoir as well. The National Portrait Gallery had a lot of cool photographs and painting of people like Twiggy, John Lennon, and, of course, the Royal Family. There was also a room with modern art type portraits, including the weirdest thing I have ever seen in my life. Its also kinda gross. It was a bust of the artist's head but it was made out of his own frozen blood! Its called "Self" by Mark Quinn and he re-makes it every five years. It was creepy and unsettling. It looks like this "Self"

Then we rested at St. James Park

We walked to Carnaby Street, which was the center of 60s fashion. We are really good Indian food there for dinner. Oh! and right before we left, a very distinguished looking man came in and sat at the table next to us and he turned out to be the actor Bill Nighy from Love, Actually!

OXFORD
Our plan to bike to Stonehenge never worked out because there is only one bike shop near there, and all their bikes were rented out for the one day we could have gone. However, Dasha and I still wanted to bike through the English countryside. So we took a bus to Oxford and rented bikes there. We biked down the Thames River and got rained on a lot. It was super British.

AMSTERDAM
Amsterdam is one of the most adorable cities I have ever seen. Its full of canals, cute dutch buildings and bicycles. There are more bicycles then people! I assume this is because some people have formal bikes and casual bikes. Of course, we rented bikes again. The streets are so bike friendly, its amazing. We rode by the botanical gardens and had a picnic at Ooster Park. Dutch is also the funniest language I have ever seen.

This is a really cool "I am Amsterdam" statue/art thing

This is everyone in the first letter of their name.(Rob and Rachel, Dasha and Danielle)

and me in the "d" because it looked fun

We also visited the Anne Frank House, or in Dutch:

Statue of Anne Frank

 

PARIS 

We took an overnight bus to Paris, which was not to terrible and it was like a free place to sleep, kind of. However, we got to Paris at 6 AM and could not check in to our hostel/apartment until 2. So we did laundry. Once we did check in, we had to take the metro to our apartment, kinda far from the city center but it turned out to be the cutest thing ever. Very Parisian. Fancy but kinda run-down and rustic. 

Ok, things we did in Paris. 

Eiffel Tower 

 

Shakespeare & Company, the most famous English-language bookstore in Paris 

 

Note Dame

 

The Pére Lachaise Cemetery 

which has many famous people buried there, like Oscar Wilde

 

you are supposed to kiss his grave with lipstick on, as you can see in this picture, so Dasha, Pat and I did just that 

 

Arch de Triumph 

The Louve (which is just was too big, but was also free the night we were there, if you were under 26)

The Basilica(this is the view from the top)

The Cafe from Amalie

and here is a picture of all of us eating dinner in the apartment (Dasha, me, Michelle, Danielle, Courtney and Pat)

ROME
Our hostel in Rome was really nice. However, it was Holy Week, so the entire city was FULL of tourists. Also, the Vatican was closed.
We did see the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, and all the Roman Forum Ruins

We took a train to Florence, which was really fun

FLORENCE
There is an NYU center in Florence. We met with one of our friends there and went to dinner at a pretty nice restaurant, we had pizza and tiramisu! Florence is a beautiful city, but kinda small. There are lots of out door markets and a whole plaza with leather markets. I bought leather gloves and a leather wallet for pretty cheap. I haggled a little.
We saw the replica of the Statue of David becase the real one is a museum and we had been to too many of those.

PISA
We were only in Pisa for about an hour but we were able to get the classic tower pics

Well that is most of the exciting stuff I did. Hope it was interesting to read about. It was an amazing trip, as I think I've mentioned. Well, back to homework.