Jack Ryan

Monday morning, we woke up and finished our last minute packing and got breakfast at the hotel before heading to Glasgow Central to depart for London. The train station was great about helping us get mom to the train along with our luggage. We boarded the train, which was incredibly nice as we had booked first class tickets. We had wifi, outlets, two meals, snacks, wine and chocolate all included with our tickets. The train ride was very pleasant, and before we knew it, we had arrived in London. We took a taxi to our hotel and were able to check into our hotel. We then ventured down the street to the Whiteleys mall which was a few minutes’ walk from the hotel. After checking out the stores, we saw the latest Night at the Museum ... read more

After waking up early to make it to my red-eye flight, I arrived at the Rome Ciampino airport to depart for Athens. I arrived in Athens a bit early, and made my way to the metro which departed from the airport. After having a bit of a hard time figuring out which line I needed, I was able to figure out which platform my train departed from and it was waiting on the platform when I finally arrived. I took the metro, which took about an hour, into Monastiraki which was a square near the hostel I was staying at. I walked to the hostel, which was a bit hard to find since my directions were in English and all of the street signs were in Greek. Once I arrived at the hostel, I dumped my ... read more

On Thursday, December 11, after finishing my final exam (and thus the semester), I set out on my final travel journey before my family arrives. I was planning on traveling to Rome and to Athens, but since flights are cheaper to fly from London rather than Glasgow, and since there are cheap flights between London and Glasgow, I decided to fly through London. On the way there, I decided to make the most of my time in London and book the Harry Potter Studio Tour. I arrived in London late Thursday evening and crashed at the hostel before getting up early the next morning to head to the studio tour. I booked the tour through Golden Tours, which worked really well since it included transportation to the otherwise potentially hard to get to studio location. The ... read more

This year for Thanksgiving, since I wouldn't be home with family, I decided to have a Friends-giving with all of the new friends I had met studying abroad. We each made a variety of dishes to share. I decided to make a corn casserole; since I couldn't find the Jiffy corn mix in stores here in the UK, I had to order it from Amazon. But, the dish turned out well and everyone seemed to enjoy it. We had a great time having dinner, wine and it was very cool sharing the Thanksgiving tradition with people, most of whom had never celebrated Thanksgiving before. We managed to fit fourteen people around the table, and we realized that we were all from eleven different countries! During dinner, we all went around and shared what we were thankful ... read more

This weekend, I got to go to Canterbury to see all of the North Central folks who are studying there and celebrate my former roommate, Chris', 21st birthday. After taking the overnight bus from Glasgow, I arrived in London early Friday morning. Since it was a bit cold and rainy and I had done a lot of the tourist attractions in London when I visited in September, I decided to check out some of the museums. I started at the Museum of Natural History, which was incredibly huge. I spent more than four and a half hours there, and I felt as though I had just scraped the surface of the collections that they boasted. It was cool that it was clearly a working museum; you could tell that continuing to pursue research was one of ... read more