Soooooooo...we're all just gonna pretend like it hasn't been a while (um.. almost a year) since the last post, and I will do a couple-minute catch-up on what's happened since then. Sorry if it's extremely poorly written, I've just written 15,000 words and my brain is a little upset with me for that.
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| the lovely Maria Antoinetta and I at the Christmas event we planned for our cohort |
After that December post (maybe like 2 days after), the future Mr. Allison and I headed to the States to be with his family. First Christmas with the (future) in laws woop woop! It was a good time... I'm still not really used to Christmas in cold weather so that was fun/weird.
Even though Chicago/Ohio was cold (Chicago was MUCH colder than Leeds was), it was still WAYYYY sunnier. As "Californians" (the Mr. gets a quotations because he'd lived in California for almost a decade), we were seriously missing sun. Lucky for us, someone had a birthday coming up and we could spend it in sunny, beautiful Portugal. We headed to Algarve, a little beachy area that is apparently really big with the English tourists come spring/summer.
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| a random heart snuck into our flight ear popping gummy bears |
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| tee heee heeeeheeee |
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| free candy and port upon arrival to our town! |
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| amazing, beautiful, HUGE villa! |
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| mmm, yes, art. |
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| he was pretty tired of smiling at this point |
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| then he started to just get goofy |
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| catchin some rays |
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| absolutely amazing seafood stew in a nearby town |
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| the ugliest birds of all time, on our golf course |
After we got back, we decided to accept that the winter would be long and cold and miserable, so we'd make like the Romans and drink like the English
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| notice Mr. poking his head in, along with a new American friend we made |
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| what's a good drink for cold weather? a frozen daiquiri! |
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| and the second was even tastier |
The new decision to go out and socialize was a good one, I think we had a good time and met some fun people. It definitely got us through the looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong winter. Finally, spring came!!! Kind of. We went to our favorite city on the island, Edinburgh!! Our last day there was March 17th, so we had some traditional Irish fare-- Tex-Mex and Strawbaritas.
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| my first haggis! SO GOOD |
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| original drink of the irish |
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| daffodils mean spring! |
Next up was MY birthday! Mr was (unfortunately) away, but he orchestrated a lovely night for me and some girlfriends. There aren't many pictures of that, but I did end up squatting at an (inhabited) apartment. It turned out surprisingly well and they didn't kick me out, but just kept asking me to shower. Y'all know how I get about showering...
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| this is my hand, on or around my birthday |
In May, we celebrated the ever-popular American holiday of Cinco de Drinko with a friend who came to visit. Coincidentally, she works for a company that sells these awesome fruity drinks (among other things), so the weekend was pretty much sponsored by them.
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| de-lish! |
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| Miss Lovely enjoying a pottail |
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| some random who looked suspiciously like my uncle, about 30 years ago |
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| having a ball! |
We also had the future Mom-in-law come visit. We couldn't manage to get any good weather for her, but we tried to show her a good time.
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| adorable! |
June was a busy month! We met up with more in-laws in sunny Spain and had such a wonderful time. The pictures say it all
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| my french doggy friend |
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| brothers talking math and science and stuff |
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| Gaudi's cathedral was truly breathtaking |
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| it was nice to sit back and let the guys work stuff out |
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| more awesome Gaudi |
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| great year! |
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| Alhambra was awesome |
After Spain, we had a super fun camping time with one of my friends from the course and her husband, and their amazing friends. It rained the night we were out there and they kept saying they hope it didn't scare us away. The company was so good, we'd camp with them in any weather! I don't have many pictures, but I did introduce everyone to s'mores (and of course they were a hit)!
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| we got some patchy sun... in Dracula's cemetery |
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| s'mores! |
In July, I was lucky enough to get a great internship down south at a place I really enjoy. The people are great and the company itself is a wonderful place to be (even as a lowly intern). They were very good to me, but being a fancy-pants business lady doesn't really call for many pictures. I was even luckier to be able to stay with some AMAZING friends who live down south and who pretty much babysat me and made sure I was bathed and fed while working. For those of you that know my English friend(s), you'll know she/they are awesome. There was one day that we were TOTALLY alone on a tube car, so that was pretty newsworthy. We played around.a lot, it was exciting.
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| weeeeeeeee! I'm so excited my legs disappeared |
We spent some time in Germany and Switzerland briefly, and sister in law came to visit and we went to Paris with her.
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| that monkey is eating its own poop |
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| extra fartin! |
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| BUTT! |
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| during Ramadan, sometimes we just smell food... |
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| before a night out in Leeds |
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| silly little french dishwasher! |
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| attempt #1: up the nose |
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| attempt #2: no Eiffel Tower and I'm not ready |
We had a number of housewarmings and birthdays to round off the summer, so here's just kind of a grouping of all the pics....
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| housewarming |
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| birthday |
...and then there was ITALY. I got a spur-of-the-moment invite from one of my favorite travel-buddies to head to Naples(ish) with her. It was phenomenal
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| why yes, that is the infamous Mt Vesuvius right next to my head |
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| Vesuvius at night |
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| I asked the bartender for something with the kiwi syrup... it was delicious |
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| that is a dog in a stroller, looking at a baby in a stroller |
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| "bitter red" was VERY disappointing |
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| caprese in Capri-- nothing like it! |
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| the water was SOOO blue |
aaaaaaand that's been my year so far! I just finished up the dissertation, we have a few more trips planned, and I'm on the job search (wish me luck)!
We should do this more often, liiiike maybe not once every nine months? I'll see what I can do...
