You sound like you're from London!

Oh my how time is beginning to fly here. Well, I returned to the Mothaland aka England.

I arrived on the soil of my ancestors Wednesday night. In Madrid I met a girl, Axxel, world traveler from France, and a guy, Alvaro, from Marbella, Spain, but student of English schools since age 5 - quite deceiving. Well, the three of us were peas in a pod and talked the entire flight, exchanged info., and will probably take family vacations together one day.

When we landed I took the train with Alvaro and his girlfriend to London and then Claire and Caroline were waiting for me at the Tube stop. And it began.

Their flat is located in between the Sherlock Holmes Museum, where sometimes a customer may climb out of the kitchen window into their courtyard outside of their bedrooms, and the Volunteer, a pub/restaurant. We went to the Volunteer and ordered strawberry beer and nachos. Welcome to London - the land of better food.

Thursday the girls had class so I walked one block from their school to the British Museum. With no security, I thought I came in some secret entrance, but when I saw everyone taking pictures and hugging Egyptian ruins I realized that there was a tad more freedom here than in all other museums I have visited. I saw the Rosetta Stone and translated it twice for practice. Alright, I just thought about how cool it would've been if I just pretended to start reading it.

Sometime into my Museum excursion I was pondering a helmet for about three seconds when a 30-some-year-old man named Kyle came and started talking to me by looking at the helmet and saying, "You like that?" No, Kyle, I'm not actually a big fan of ancient headgear. But really I said, "This? Oh yeah." At the beginning of the conversation, he was from Egypt, and by the end he was from Ohio. He encouraged me to check out Cleveland's night life. It really wasn't odd that he was talking to me since every other person there was either a) on a field trip, b) really old, or c) foreign/non-English Speaking, usually Spanish. However, I decided it was best to inform dear Kyle that we cannot, in fact, be friends, because Michiganders do like people from Ohio.
Kyle- "Oh, that's just silly college rivalry stuff."
Caitlin - "Well, I don't actually think it's silly, because I'm still in college"
Kyle- "It's just with sports though not with all the people from the state. I mean here we're just Americans."
Caitlin- "I'm pretty sure it's with sports and all their fans, and I take it pretty seriously. Maybe if you weren't from Ohio, because there are a lot of Americans in London. Nice to meet you, Kyle, bye."
I saw him once more in the museum and although he really wanted to explore London together I had to sadly inform him that I had other college friends here who were surprising me with a very busy afternoon of adventure and I had no idea where I'd be.

After class, we headed to an Asian restaurant, Wagamama, to go over all that we'd planned to do that day. We did some shopping on Oxford Street and I continued exploring the city while they went to their night class. Caroline, future Top Chef of America, made dinner and then the three of us, Rachel, and Caroline's Turkish boi, Dameer, bounced off to O'Neill's - the best pub in the world.

On the Tube, we found it very amusing to speak about how we on tour with Wicked, or in a band called Metallic Ice, or how Eminem is my cousin. Or sometimes, while waiting for the trian, we'd just sing. I'm not sure how this started, but it made our experiences with public transportation rather exciting.

Then. On the walk to O'Neill's from the Tube stop - in some completely random place in London - I hear my name. I turn. Who is there, but my bosom buddy, Kyle. How do these things happen to me? We enjoyed one more amicable conversation and Claire, Caroline, and I decided that he would probably follow us for the rest of the weekend. If he did, he did not reveal himself again, but we probably would not have been surprised if he popped up at the oh -so-popular-and-famous Home of Holmes.

O'Neill's was glorious. I met my future husband, Conrad, the bouncer from South Africa. I met "my cousin", John, who works for Apple, some Italian boys from Rome - one who's teeth were especially white, Simon from New Zealand who was very friendly, 2 boys whom I gave "Eminem's cell phone number", and on the bus, 2 Kenyan men - one living in Norway and the other in London. Pretty much, I decided that English people are the kindest, most polite people in the world. And I love it.

Friday, we slept in a bit after our long adventure the night before. Then Caroline made breakfast and by the time I went outside it was London's rush hour. Caroline, Claire, Rachel, and I went to the London Eye, watched a romantic sunset over Big Ben and Buckingham Palace, and then headed to an Italian restaurant for dinner. When we left, we were nearly trampled by about 200 rioting, screaming teens. I asked a police officer what was going on and he replied, "Well, this may be rude of me to say, but I believe some teens organized a sort of chaotic event on Facebook."

Next, we went to a precious little pub to watch their friend, MJG, sing and play the guitar. He put on a great performance, and then it turned out that the guy I was sitting next to and chatting with was up next with his band. A true English band - they brought imo and rock and roll together with a perfect mix of tambourine, shouting, and acoustic melodies.

Saturday, we headed to Brighton - the seaside city known as a weekend getaway for affairs. We played MASH on the train - and great news! I'm marrying Prince Harry, but the adjective to describe him is dead. However, we did have 3 children, and at least he's not "lacking" like Claire's future husband. Caroline seems to be the lucky one - marrying Smeagol from Tesco (like 7/11), who, most likely by means of plastic surgery, is devastatingly handsome.

We ate the traditional English breakfast/feast when we arrived of toast, eggs, hash browns, veggie sausage, beans, and tomatoes. The unique shops lined the colorful streets and we decided it'd be best if we took "Top Model" shots when we felt especially inspired, such as in front of giant murals of graffiti. Also, the store names were rather entertaining. Our favorite was probably the historic Corn Exchange. Too bad we forgot to bring some.

Soon we found ourselves at a Palace. We were actually in the perfectly trimmed backyard of a palace, but eventually we found the front door. After pretending to debate whether or not we wanted to buy the guide with beautiful pictures of all the rooms inside to use on the tour inside, we decided to skip that little six euro excursion and headed to the beach. On the way we stopped into an art museum.

The Brighton Pier is an enchanting new world for those under ten, trippy for those rebellious English teens, a cheesy date for young lovers, and a casino for the elderly who like to race against five-year-old children dressed as Spiderman and beat them even though they could have won a giant 5-foot long shark stuffed-animal. For everyone else, the Pier is just kind of another creepy carnival. It was great.

The sun peeking through the clouds inspired us to try out the English Channel. When we entered the more-freezing-cold-than-ice water, a wave came, and we may have experienced symptoms of hypothermia in our legs. We laid down on the seashell pebbled beach to recover. We took a lot of awkward pictures where at least one of us had a double chin each time - but not on purpose. Then found a mall and after a long search, an Asian restaurant that didn't open for 10 minutes.

After dinner we went into a couple pubs and watched all the people watching an England v. Ireland rugby game yell and shout. It was the bullocks.

To end our lovely day trip we went to a cafe for a typical English dessert. The Irish waitress was super-super-nice and brought up the chef's recipe book from the kitchen for us to copy the recipe. Needless to say, I love England.

The day did not exhaust us enough to not celebrate our last evening at O'Neill's, of course. Conrad picked us up and spun us around and the night commenced. First, we met a ScoIrish guy, Chris, who lost a bet and had to wear a 10pound outfit from a thrift store. His red leather vest and flower blouse, I thought, brought out his eyes. Another Irish guy, after requesting us to rap, went off in a tizzy - most likely overwhelmed by our greatness. My "2nd cousin" was not so convinced of our blood relation and I ended our potentially life-long friendship running away saying, "I don't believe in incest." The dance floor was, as always, wonderfully crazy. We met a group of guys in the English Army, and Dan and I especially got along. Yet, after two Strongbows and however many his military kidneys can handle, we seemed to forget the whole exchange of last names, phone numbers, e-mails, etc. After a bit more dancing we decided to explore the first floor, where I met a 25-year-old French man named Stan who's opening a hospital in London. We hit it off and I even remembered my phone number when he asked so we could be bff's, but I also did not meet him outside for a smoke like I said I would, and thus, have only myself to blame for letting the relationship crumble. A close to teary goodbye with Conrad ended the O'Neill's outing and we hopped on the bus home. I spoke with a nice English gentleman accountant on the ride home.

We arrived to the flat at about 4am and as we enjoyed our Magnum ice cream - it's just delicious ice cream, it has no relation to other companies named Magnum - and then we realized that my bus for the airport would leave in an hour. I jumped in the shower, packed, and we looked up where the stop was and one minute after arriving the bus came. Perhaps this may have been a somewhat stressful situation but I was not exactly in the most sober state of mind. Cheap date? No, embarrassing. It was two beers for goodness sake.

I passed out on the bus and woke up when we were parked at the airport. I stumbled off, and having never changed my watch I thought it was an hour ahead. I ran inside, checked-in, and got stopped at security. Maybe I would have been embarrassed of the entire contents of my bag being spread out over a giant table, but at the moment I was moreso feeling entertained. Also, even the English security man was kind - asking me about how my trip was, what I did, if I'd like to come back. God bless him. So then I ran to the gate - the 3rd from last in the entire airport and it was deserted. I handed the man my boarding pass apologizing and he said, "Oh sweetie, you're plenty early. You've got a whole hour." I laughed, sat down in front of the desk, and passed out again. I woke when he announced, basically to me since I was alone at the gate, "Last call, London to Madrid." I jumped up, boarded, and passed out again, impressed by the long-lasting effects of Strongbow. I did not wake up until we were on the ground in Madrid, but I awoke sober and starving.

Marta and I met up at the airport, because she had gone home for the weekend, and we headed home. The rest of Sunday we all just hung out in Resa.

This whole past week was full of studying and paperwork. I applied for an exchange program in England for all of next year, wrote a six page paper on the love, social classes, and structure of the first half of "Don Quijote", and took my finals for History and Art History on Friday. It was a pretty normal week, besides Javier's craziness on Wednesday. He made Evan come into our class and show us the Soulja Boy dance and then had Stacie tell us about her love for Shakira. What he has yet to tell us is about how he's moving to France with his woman, but Mariaje did tell us and we planned a party for him next week. He also asked me how many times I would get married and I said six - 2 in Vegas.

Friday, Jenna and I made all of our train reservations for Spring Break and responded to our CouchSurfing friend, Marc in Zurich, to tell him that we will be able to make it to his End-of-Exams house party.

Today, we did some Spring cleaning, Jenna and I went to breakfast, and now Jenna's boyfriend, Justin, is here! Marta also made her plans to come to the States! So much excitement. Joder.