Random Stuff About Me

As my first post I talked about myself but I'm bored so I decided to make a more about me post because I'm sure you all want to know. My full name is Anji Mei Cooper
pronounced On-ji May (I'm from China hence the weird name.)
I was adopted from China by my parents David and Sherri on March 17, 2002. The only reason I remember that date is because it is also St. Patricks day. You see, I'm good with dates like book and movie releases and my friends' birthdays but I can never remember my parents' birthdays or my house address. I have one sibling, Zia Mei Cooper, we share a middle name, how awkward. Zia is two and a half years older than me, she's currently in her sophomore year of high school and we're complete opposites. Where she likes sports I like reading and writing, where she prefers netflix I again, like reading more. She also has no idea what a blog is and I own like twenty three blogs so if I didn't know what one was there would be something supremely wrong with me. Where I'm more concentrated on my academics, she's more interested in sports, stuff like that. Zia and I also don't get along very well, we get into arguments a lot. I have two cats, Nix and Lily, they're siamese cats which is what my mom had when she was a kid. I don't have that big of a family compared to other people, where some people have hundreds of cousins I have seven, mom and dad's side. I have two cousin's on my mom's side, Austin and Andy, I don't really know them that well since there's a pretty big age gap. On my dad's side there's Anders and Ivan Croft, Meagan and Ryan Cooper and Ethan Cooper. Again, don't really know Ethan that well because of the age gap. Meg is a year younger than me ad Ryan is like two or three years younger then me, I can't remember.
Anders is Zia's age and Ivan's my age which is really convenient, we go camping with their family every year and spend Thanksgiving and Christmas together. There isn't really much contact out of that since Anders and Ivan never really seem to text back.
I went to preschool at Apple Cheeks and had three best friends there, Amelia, who was a year older than me, Colin Drennan who is my age and Timothy Moxey who is also my age. Colin and Timothy were actually my two best friends in preschool since they were the same age as me, but Amelia and I were good friends and I was really sad when she left preschool. I remember Colin always liked to brag about he was a whole quarter of a year older than Timothy and I. I'm not in contact with any of them anymore which is kind of sad but, well, can't really do anything about it. I remember having a crush on Colin when we were little. Yes, four-year-olds can have crushes. I was friends with this girl named Brooke, too, she was my shadow in preschool, I remember she liked to follow me around a lot and copy me, which annoyed my four-year-old self sometimes.
For my kindergarten year my mom had a sabbatical in Maine, so for my first year of school I went to it in Maine. My best friends there were Amanda, Laney, Sophie, Nyx, Lillie, Tristan, Isaac and Cooper. Cooper Hogan, it's funny because his name is a combination of Fiona and my last names. Please ignore the fact there was a Nyx and Lillie. Ah Maine was a fun year. I remember Zia and I went slug hunting, I took a ceramics class, a glass making class along with other things. We lived on Oars Island with a massive amount of property. The beaches around where we lived were rocky ones, but I didn't mind. There were some really bad snow storms in Maine, but they were used to it, so our school had a gigantic generator, we had hardly any snow days. Once a storm was so bad we had to leave our house in the jeep, drive out into the woods around the road and stay at a hotel. I remember it snowed near Easter time and I made a snow bunny. The snow wasn't really snow man (or bunny) material, it was an icy snow that was better for sledding. So whenever I stuck an ear on the bunny, an eye fell out and whenever I stuck the eye back in somehow the ear fell off.  In Maine I was on every sports team a kindergartener could be in, which was cross country and basketball. My favorite was definitely cross country, I loved it.
First Grade was kind of hard for me, it was in a different school, in a different state, with completely different people. The boys were insane, loud and rowdy and the girls were very... different from the ones in Maine. I was the 'new girl' in first grade even though I had lived in Bryn Athyn before Maine. I stuck by Ursula a lot of that year because I knew her. I also became friends with Camryn Buss, Emma Reuter, and Sophie Bostock that year. Camryn turns out was that person who lived down the street from us with the bikes always in the driveway. When our parents first tried to introduce us at the Bryn Athyn Pool we were both so shy we didn't want to talk to each other. But later, Camryn was staring down at the pool where her torpedo was and I ask her if she wanted me to get if for her and our friendship blossomed from there. I'm not exactly sure how I became friends with Sophie and Emma I just remember it happening.
Not exactly sure when I'll continue this very stimulating story of my life but stay tuned! ;) 

Fairies and Chocolate

Remember back in my Friends: Emma post I said my most prominent memory from our childhood together was the fairy and the chocolate eggs, well, here's what happened. Back when we were in first grade, maybe second grade, so younger than we were in this picture, we stole chocolate eggs. It was around Easter time and her family had this gigantic box of chocolate eggs and as younglings we really liked candy. I mean, I still do like candy I just like ice cream more. Her mom said we could have two chocolate eggs, and then she went upstairs to take a nap. I guess since Emma was the oldest she was supposed to be responsible, but hey, we were like six or seven. So anyway, when we were little, Emma and I spent 90% of our time at her house down in her basement where all the toys and stuff were. Those two chocolate eggs were delicious, and since Emma's mom was upstairs taking a nap, we decided the only logical thing to do was to get more. So up the stairs we went and into the pantry. Taking handfuls and bundling a bunch of eggs into our shirts, we snuck back downstairs. I just sat by the trash can eating my share of the eggs and throwing out the wrappers, but Emma thought that her parents would see the wrappers in the trash, so she sat by the furniture and tucked the wrappers under there. I'm pretty sure several trips were made up the stairs and into the pantry to get more chocolate.
After maybe the second trip or possibly the third Emma started getting anxious about her mom coming downstairs and she was fiddling with this fairy toy that if you pull at the edges it will go higher. 

And so our brilliant minds came up with this idea, completely forgetting the whole 'taking a nap' thing. The fairy staying up must have been what was keeping her mom upstairs instead of coming into the basement! SO Emma and I took turns keeping the fairy up, then, since we were on a roll with these bright ideas, we came up with another idea, if we put our hair into her parents' possessions we could track them. Yeah, don't even ask me what logic that was. After going into her small bathroom in the basement we used those child scissors and cut of pieces of our hair. We put my strand in her mom's shoe and when her dad came home Emma was super sneaky by slipping the hair in his pocket when she hugged him. Except she wasn't, so her dad pulled the hair out of his back pocket and I'm pretty sure Emma got in some trouble after I left. And then of course, the next day her family moved their furniture around in the basement and discovered all the candy wrappers under the furniture, they never even looked in the trash, but Emma got in more trouble after that. And that is my most memorable childhood memory with Emma. 

Ursula

Ursula Hope Friesen 'Urs' 'Ursy' 'Ursyboo' 
Ursula is my older younger sister I never wanted. What do I mean by that? She's older than me but she acts younger so I think of her as my younger sister, sometimes I treat her like my younger sister, too. She plays field hockey, tennis, hockey and softball, her best sport is hockey, she's really good. Ursy likes reading, not as much as me, but she likes it. Her true passion is for YouTube she's practically obsessed with it, like we'll be in the middle of a conversation, headphones go in and she's on YouTube watching Dan and Phil. -_- Click here to see her YouTube account and click here to see mine. Urs and I have been literally friends forever, we've known each other since pre-schoolbut we became really really good friends in first grade, when I moved back to Pennsylvania. We were together a lot of the time. I remember playing numerous games in her basement, and trying to figure out how to lock her cats in a room with a hole in the wall with only pillows (Oh shush we were 6). We loved to go down and play in the creek by her house, we even made a museum there which was pretty cool, but it got ruined later. Oh, once we took her mom's perfume when we were in second grade and 'cleaned' Ursula's room by spraying everything. Her mom found out and I had to go home early.
In seventh grade, I remember meeting Ursula and Dara for dinner at bwell and then, after dropping Dara off, we went back to her house to hang out. We were there alone and if you didn't know, her house is 80% windows. So when these guys we didn't recognize came and knocked on the door, naturally we flipped out. Ursula bolted for her parents' room while I grabbed her laptop and my milkshake and then bolted to her parents' room after her (#priorities). Since we had to run back to the kitchen to get something like a knife for protection, and there were windows, Ursula handed me a screw driver and she grabbed a pair of scissors. Yeah, a screw driver. Anyway we had freaked out, thinking we would be murdered or kidnapped or something, so she called her dad a bunch of times until he picked up. Turns out those guys were there to work on her yard or something and they just happened to have a creepy white beat up truck that looked ultra suspicious. Guess I won't be using that screw driver any time soon. 

Emma

Emma Joy Reuter 'Em' 
Emma is like the shorter possibly louder version of Fiona. She loves taking pictures and videos of herself even more than Fiona does. *gasp* Emma and I have been friends since the first grade, I met her once before that but at the time I'd wanted to punch her in the face so.... First grade through third grade, Emma, Camryn, and I were best friends. In fourth grade that changed. We were still friends but I sort of separated from the group. I just recently found out that Emma was jealous of pretty much everything I did- my cooking and making, my drawing, my school projects, but that had nothing to do with it, I just find it funny. Fifth grade through most of sixth grade it seemed like Emma and Camryn were tied at the hip. Then in sixth grade Emma went from the crazy but quiet sweet girl to the loud and crazy one. I'm not sure which one is more loud, Fiona or Emma. I thought Emma hated me for most of sixth grade so we weren't very code that year, in seventh grade Emma and I hung out a little more. What sucks is that Emma and my schedules never seem to work out. Whenever I'm busy, Emma's free and whenever I'm free Emma's busy. Very convenient for if we want to hang out, don't you think?
Em plays field hockey, tennis and soft ball. She's really good at field hockey, though I'll admit I've never seen her play tennis or soft ball. When she and Fiona are together.... it's really loud, and there's a lot of energy, a lot of the time they tire me out. Emma is funny, short,nice (haha not), sarcastic, and fun to be with. Like I said before, she likes filming herself so I have this feeling that she'll be in a lot of my videos.
I have a lot of child hood memories with Emma, the most detailed one I remember was the magic fairy and the chocolate eggs, but I'll make another blog post on that one later. I don't know about you, but for me, first through third grade it was all about webkinz. Emma and I would set up playdates with our webkinz, Africa, my elephant, and Max, her chocolate lab, were married and had a bunch of kids (... how?...) Then Em and I would play school with them where we were the teachers and we taught the 'students' which were Africa and Max's children, plus others. I don't like monkeys, I don't think they're cute so she had a gorilla monkey and he was always the mean one, since I didn't like gorilla's. He was always being mean to the other webkinz, knocking them off seesaws, bullying them, and whatnot. Emma once told me she felt bad for him and wanted to change the mean one, I said no. For one of her birthdays, I gave Emma a toy microscope, so we would cut the 'fur'/fuzz off our webkinz and look at it under the microscope for disease and stuff. Would you believe me if I said we found a bunch of different diseases in them and treated them immediately? Em and I, best scientists around. Once Emma and I even tried to train her dog, Montie, with dog food. I remember for while Nintendogs was a thing. Emma and would get together on Fridays, hook up our Ds's and make playdates with our dogs. We did some pretty strange things as children I'll admit.  

Caroline

Caroline Rose O'Hagan 'Care'
Caroline is fairly new to our school, she arrived just last year. I remember when she visited BACS when we were in 6th Grade, my first impression of her was that she was really tall and didn't seem very interested in anyone but Dara. Which, I'll admit I was kind of offended by, especially since Dara and I weren't good friends back then. She seemed kind of awkward, but who wouldn't be when visiting a different school with a bunch of crazy kids? I swear when we graduate the teachers are going to say like "Thank God the class of 2015 is gone, they were the worst class to have ever come through the school" haha. I tried to be nice to her and all but I later found out she just thought I was weird. Ouch, Care. Whatever, I am weird. The way Caroline and I actually started talking was when she responded to one of Dara's mass text messages and I got it. I was actually with Fiona at the time and I got a text from a strange number saying something about it being cool or something. So if you didn't know, my old crappy phone didn't do group conversations so I would get every question separately. I remember once when my friend, Ursula, sent out a text message of a Flyers Game picture to like all her contacts I ended up texting her Aunt Emily for a while afterwards because I got the reply. Back to the point, so this weird number texted me and I said "Who is this?" then Caroline said something like "I don't know you let's stop texting" But in a politer manner but I insisted on knowing who it was so she finally said "Are you friends with Dara?"
Like I said before Dara and I weren't good friends at the time but we were still friends, so I said yes and we ended up texting from there. So over the summer I texted Caroline a lot an I thought we were becoming good friends, I did end up going to her house once that summer, too, which no one else had done (yay). Later I found out Caroline also thought I was weird for texting her.... Okay then.
In the beginning of our 7th Grade year, Care and I were practically best friends, but then someone unfortunately told me that Caroline had lice and everyone else that Caroline had lice so Caroline stayed away from me for a good part of the rest of the year. FYI there was no lice. But near the end of the year when we were both at Dara's house (we had already started re-bonding over both of us wanting to see the movie Endless Love staring Alex Pettyfer) when I told Care that someone had told me she had lice and then she told me that that same person had told her that I had lice. After that we started hanging out a lot more and now Caroline is one of my best friends. We talked a lot over the summer and hung out quite a few times. Care, if you're reading this, I'm still planning on stealing your pool. So Care and I are both in all the same classes this year which is great because we can sit next to each other in them. Having really good friends in your classes makes them a lot more durable. (If you hadn't already figured that out) Care is not yet in any of my videos, though I'm anticipating her being in one soon, hopefully. She's not as into that type of thing as Emma or Fiona, though. Caroline is funny, outgoing, witty (occasionally), she can be nice, understanding and she's very trustworthy. Plus, she likes my cooking. Plus she has a pool. She's really enjoyable to be with, though me next to her isn't too great since I look like a midget next to both her and Fiona who are both quite a bit taller than me.
When Care and I hang out a lot of the time we'll walk down to bwell bakery and fight over food, so if anyone from bwell is reading this, the tall pale girl and the short asian fighting over food and possibly slapping each other is most likely Caroline and I. I actually just got back from watching Caroline's sister, Sophia's tennis practice for Caroline. We went to bwell fought over food, then walked back to the tennis courts. I'm trying to teach he the books of the Word, I just spent the last hour and forty five minutes trying. She kept saying Jedidiah for everything along with Jeremiah and Joshua. Yeah.....We're still working on it.
Care plays soccer and she's really good at it. I can't play soccer for my life, it's my least favorite sport, lol. 

Fiona

Fiona Spring Hogan 'Fi'
She's crazy. Fiona's one of my best friends, we became friends in the fifth grade after she got her adenoids and tonsils out. I got mine out when I was four so I felt for her, and brought her ice cream, it was Ben and Jerry's so naturally our friendship bloomed from there. I remember sometime in the fall of that year when I was making lunch she came up behind me and said something like 'your hair looks really pretty down' and I was surprised that she talked to me, we weren't really in the same friends groups.. at all. (I didn't have really any close friends in my grade at the time tbh)  But it wasn't until like February/January that we became friends.
Fifth Grade was also the year both of us got our first phones. Luckily for our parents we both had unlimited texts messaging otherwise they'd be paying a lot of phone bills, since I remember one Tuesday night (yeah I remember the day lol) we texted over a thousand messages each while she was still at home from the surgery. I remember I was at the ice rink for some reason that night but that was a really unnecessary detail.
The third term of our fifth grade year Fiona and I got pretty close, but over the summer we got even closer, I think it was probably because we were both free a lot. But it wasn't until sixth grade that we really became best friends. That year was fun, sixth grade has to have been my favorite year so far but I'll make another blog post on that some other time.
Over the summer after leaving sixth grade but before going into seventh my mom, Fiona and I went on two vacations together. Fiona and I also were probably together for over half of the summer. The first place we went that summer was what I call 'The Cottage' which is a cottage near Orangeville that my family has. We had a lot of fun there, in fact both the pictures  were taken there. We went tubing and pretty much just hung out on tubes in the river/stream talked, and teased each other. I remember making up a song with different lyrics to the song 'You Belong With Me' to tease Fiona, it annoyed her to no end. And then she stole my IPod every five seconds to take selfies (as seen on the top picture, I was in the shower) Anyway it was a lot of fun. We went to the Orangeville Fair, and jeez that thing is tiny, seriously the ferris wheel ride was 15 minutes because of how few people were there, we have a video of it.
The second vacation we went on was closer to the end of the summer, we went down to Core Point, North Carolina with my mom, notice how my sister isn't in either of those? That's because I carefully planned these specially so she'd be at camp during these time periods. North Carolina was definitely my favorite of the two vacations. We went tubing, it was so much fun. Fi and I came up with these things for the different handholds depending on which way the jet ski was turning, GEAR! for my hand holds and NEUTRAL! for Fiona's side. I remember the night before we went Jet Skiing and Fiona tipped the Jet Ski by leaning the wrong way.
7th Grade year Fi and I didn't hang out much in the fall term, but after the new year we started hanging out a lot more. Fiona is crazy, like I said before. She's loud, fun, really lovable, outgoing, insane and very bold and straightforward. So pretty much the opposite of me haha. Well, I can be those just around my friends though.  You'll probably see her in a lot of blog posts, pictures, and videos. Fiona likes making videos and having pictures taken. I love Fiona, she's really trustworthy and she likes eating my food. Most of the time I'm bribing her with the food I cook and bake. It's nice having her around to taste test, haha. She likes my food, listens to me ramble about books, listens to me, and likes me, what's not to love?
Oh, and I forgot to add, Fiona's really good at sports, like field hockey and soft ball. 

Europe 2014 (Lake District and Scotland)

The day after London we left the place in Oxford and drove, three to four to five to six hours up to The Lake District. The Lake District was definitely my favorite place to stay maybe it had to do with the fact we stayed there for six days or maybe because it was so pretty or maybe because the bed and breakfast we stayed at was very comfortable. Zia and I stayed in room three while our parents stayed in room six. I got the big bed in the bedroom since Zia made me sleep in a cot last time. We also got the good bathroom, but not a good view. Unfortunately no air conditioning so if we were in the room during the day it was boiling, especially the days without any breeze outside. Howard, Rosa, John, Sophia and Francesca were also staying there, except in a cottage instead of in the bed and breakfast. We had dinner with them the first night, it was a three course meal, the main course being roast beef and dessert was custard and a cookie. After that we went our separate ways. So the wi-fi in the place we were staying sucked unless you were in a certain place, the best wifi spot was on the stairs which was right outside Zia and my room. So we were sitting on the stairs a lot. I finished the Bloodlines books 1-4 there as well as the Shatter Me Series by Tahereh Mafi. Actually, I finished the Shatter Me series in one day. So the first official full day we were in the Lake District we took a boat across the Lake. Except, of course we had to walk to the boat landing. That was rather complicated since we had to walk through a bunch of sheep fields, climb a few fences and then walk all the way back because it was the wrong way to get there, we nearly missed the boat after running to get there. After going across the lake, we were at a small place where there were a bunch of ducks, and people. We ate at the cafe that was right next to the dock, I got a smoked salmon sandwich and a smoothie, sound familiar? I got A LOT of smoked salmon, from the airports, cafes, etc. After lunch, I went out and fed the ducks the crust from my sandwich and that's where my duck feeding obsession started. Our families separated, Francesca wanted to stay by that area and run in one of those blow up hamster ball type things that float in the water, so while their family stayed, my family walked about an hour through a bunch of sheep and cow fields to get to the fair that was on the other side.
Guess what? We would've had to pay like $12 US each to get into the fair and only have been there for like six minutes before having to walk back, so we just walked back. We walked all the way there for nothing. Joy.
On day two Zia, John, Francesca, Howard, and my dad went to a place called Go Ape. I decided not to go because 1. I'm slightly scared of heights 2. It didn't sound fun for me. So I saved some toast from breakfast and after having a lunch of half a scone and some tea with my mom, I went down to the lake to feed some ducks. Unfortunately on our side of the Lake there weren't as many ducks and the ducks were scared of me. I did feed them though, there was one duck which I affectionately named TMD, meaning The Mean Duck because it chased away and bit any other duck trying to get bread, though I was able to evade that duck throw bread one way, and while the duck was getting it, throw some to the other ducks. I read most of the day, but for some reason by the end of the day I was exhausted. I think it was the time zone difference. I have no idea what time tone my head was in, it wasn't England's or New York's lol.
I was really missing my friends by then, especially when Zia and I got into fights. Because of the time difference it was really hard to find a way to text Caroline on Viber, plus, Caroline if you're reading this, you're really bad at replying in the next five minutes. or replying. period.
On day three we took the bed and breakfast's row boats and went rowing across the lake for the whole day. It was really hot. We stopped at a hotel across the lake for lunch, I got, guess what, a smoked salmon sandwich and a glass of lemonade. The lemonade was amazing there, it was like French lemonade but a little lighter. I saved half of my sandwich to feed the ducks later (the bread not the salmon) and stuffed it in my dad's backpack. After about an hour of rowing after lunch, it got hot. I was wearing my bikini under my clothes so I just lay across the front of the row boat in the sun, that got pretty hot after a while too, though. We eventually stopped at a beach a long ways away from the bed and breakfast. It didn't look like anyone had ever been on that beach, how do I know that? There were a bunch of skipping stones on the beach. I went swimming for a bit but the water was freezing so I got out pretty quickly. And Ugh, guess what I found? A sheep carcass what in the world ate it I have no idea. It was a bunch of fur and bone. And ew I found it's foot. That was really gross.
So rowing back was hot and took a while, once we got back I showered, and then went outside for dinner, which was fish and chips. I finally got a coke, and Raziel it was refreshing, I'd been living off tea and water for the last few days. If you didn't know, I hate water it tastes horrible.
Day four we went pony trekking up the mountain. I was seriously scared my pony would run off or something, Kitty was not being a good pony. she kept stopping to eat and walking off the trail. I don't have a fractured skull right now, so I'm okay. It was REALLY hot out and wearing sneakers and long pants was not helping. It was a really fun pony ride if you put those two things aside, and my upper legs didn't hurt too much afterwards. After we got back to the Coniston (town closest to the bed and breakfast) we stopped at a place and got ice cream, I got honey comb, it was new and interesting. Oh, I forgot, while I was on Kitty, a fly bit my hand and it swelled and the bone in it hurt. For dinner we went to a pub like dinner place, getting dinner took forever so during the wait we talked about some pretty random things. I was able to convince Francesca that the Shatter Me book cover was a mountain. 

I'm still not exactly sure how. I got scampi for dinner, it came with chips *cough fries and coleslaw. The fries were really good but I got full after the scampi and coleslaw so I let Zia, John and Francesca have the rest. Apparently I put too much salt on which is funny because I would've added more if I were to continue eating them.
Day five I really enjoyed, everyone else went out to climb the mountain but since I didn't bring my inhaler with me I didn't go so I had the whole day to myself. For the first part I was up in my room sprawled across my bed, reading, but after I went down and had lunch (crisps, smoked salmon sandwich, tea) I sat on this green leather couch in one of the extra rooms that I had recently (the day before) found comfortable for reading. I read the whole Shatter Me series that day.
Over dinner we were talking about british and american words. We got into an argument over cookies and biscuits. Apparently they think cookies like Oreos are called biscuits. Even though it clearly says 'Milks favorite cookie' on the box. It even has milk on the box. Ugh now I'm craving Oreos. Anyway biscuits are those delicious flakey layered bread rolls. 

Day six we got breakfast,packed up, said goodbye to Howard's family and drove to Scotland. On our way there we stopped at Hadrian's wall, it was hot out so Zia and I were none to happy to be stopping. Also, the walk up to Hadrian's wall was like ten minutes and it was really hot, smelly, and stinky because it was a sheep field and the sheep crapped everywhere. I was pretty much done with sheep by the time we left England. Hadrian's wall in on the border of Scotland and England so on one side is Scotland and the other England. The England side of Hadrian's wall was a whole lot stinkier because of all the sheep crap, I did not enjoy walking on the pathway covered in it. Sorry, but I was in a bit of a bad mood then, but I calmed down before Zia did.

In Scotland we stayed with Helen and Neil Laidlaw. Helen is a really good cook. On day two of being in Scotland and our first full day there went to Edinburgh. By then I was just ready to go home, not because I was home sick but because I really missed my friends and honestly, I was getting kinda/really annoyed with my family, I don't usually spend that much time with them. Usually/never. Edinburgh was cool, we got to go to the Elephant House which was where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter, the bathroom is covered in writing, people saying thank you to JK  Rowling and such. Edinburgh castle was kinda cool, I was kind of/pretty bored of sightseeing by then, though, plus Zia was making me really grumpy so I didn't take many pictures there.
Day three of being in Scotland we visited Tantallon Castle, I enjoyed looking around. For lunch we went to a place where I got a bunch of smoked fish samples to eat. We ate outside, so it was funny because there was a pool in the ocean and a bunch of people were swimming in it. Where it is too cold for us to go swimming, it was warm for the people in Scotland.  In Scotland and England the currency is pounds, which pretty much you double the amount of pounds and that's the amount of US dollars it is. Stuff in Europe was expensive. 

So from Scotland we flew three hours to Iceland then flew six hours back to New York. I was 92% done Lola and the Boy Next Door when my Kindle Fire shut down so I had to wait the last thirty minutes, plus going through customs, then renting a car, to get in the car, and charge my kindle so I could finish the book. That pissed me off. So we had the two hour drive home and when we got back, we were all really jet lagged, I stayed jet lagged for a couple days after. All in all the trip was pretty good. I read 23 books in two weeks, which I was pretty proud of.

Thanks for reading! :)
Anji

Europe 2014 (Oxford and London)

Our flight to London was three hours. Somehow I was more cramped up after our London flight than the one to Iceland. So, England is five hours ahead of New York time. Joy, that took a while to get used to since I still wasn't used to Icelandic time. So when we got to England we went to a Hertz place to rent a car. It took forever, the lady that was talking to us there took forever to do everything and by the time we were done there it was dark out. Oh, here's an interesting thing that makes Caroline laugh every time I talk about it, so on our way to the hotel we were staying at, we got lost. Yeah, getting lost in a different country, that sure is fun. Especially when it's dark and you have yet to have dinner. I didn't get dinner that night. We spent three hours trying to get to the hotel when it only should've taken one and a half. It wasn't as bad for Zia, because she went to sleep, but I was up the whole time, reading (what else was I going to do?) so it was hard to ignore my growling stomach. We finally got to the hotel rather late and then Zia made me sleep on the cot instead of a bed, gee, thanks sis. At least we had adapters this time. The cot wasn't too comfortable and made a lot of noise when I moved. We were all in one room together so it was kind of crowded. Plus, Zia and I don't exactly get along, so...
The next day we went to my dad's friend from college's house in Oxford. Howard is a professor at Oxford University so he showed us around. Oxford is a place where some of Harry Potter was filmed. It was really cool. So I should probably explain a packing thing before I forget. So my dad tells me it's going to be cold on this trip so to only pack like three pairs of shorts and a few short sleeved shirts. That turned out to be untrue so the whole trip I was pretty much rewearing the same outfits every other day. Of course when we visit and I bring a minimal amount of short sleeved stuff the UK magically decides to have only hot days. I mean, it was nice for pictures, not so nice for sitting on top of a tour bus. Also, it seems that not a lot of places in the UK need air conditioning, since it's cool and rainy most of the time. That was a high complaint of mine, I'm hot-blooded so I get hot really easily and not having air conditioning didn't bode too well with me. Another complaint of mine was that the wi-fi in all the places we stayed didn't work too well, and since we were in a different country we couldn't really use our phones.
Back to Oxford, it was interesting to walk around, we stopped at a place for lunch and got sandwiches, I got a tuna melt on a panini. After lunch we went to a bookstore in Oxford. It was so much fun seeing the British version of the covers to all my books. Apparently they don't have hardcovers of Cassandra Clare's books, that would depress me if I lived there. I finished Last Sacrifice while sitting in the room where they filmed The Great Hall in Harry Potter. After walking around Oxford all day, I was really hot and ready to go back. We stayed at Howard's house for dinner, he has three kids, John (18) Sophia (15) and Francesca (11). It was fun hanging out with them, Francesca had a lot of energy. 

So the day after visiting Oxford, Zia, my dad and me took a bus to London. The bus ride was one and a half hours long and unfortunately the 'free wifi' on it didn't work. I slept most of the way since I had nothing to read. Apparently Zia enjoyed taking a bunch of pictures of me while I slept. After we got off the bus, we walked around and found a tour bus, we decided to start off with taking the Big Bus tour Red. Sitting on the roof was hot and it was hard to understand the person commentating since he 1. had a confusing british accent 2. was speaking way to closely to the microphone. We got off at a stop near an area with a blue rooster statue. There were a bunch of money making things there, like one person was drawing incredibly detailed pictures of all the world's country's flags in chalk on the flagstones, there was a dance show/tricks show, a yoda etc. After crossing a few roads and walking around to random places we stopped at a cafe to eat lunch. I got a smoked salmon sandwich, salt and vinegar crisps, and a berry smoothie. The wifi didn't work there either.
After lunch we got back on the bus, except we got on a Big Bus Tour Blue instead of Red because the Red took forever to find. I liked the Blue one better 1. because we got free headphones 2. because we got to listen to a prerecorded voice that was easy to understand. We went past the bank where they filmed Gringots in Harry Potter. I think our next place where we got off was a cathedral because I wanted to go to Blackfriars Bridge and that was the closest place to it. Problem, I hadn't looked up what Blackfriars Bridge looked like so it took a bit to figure out which bridge it was. Blackfriars Bridge really was the only reason I wanted to go to London. Why? Because of a book, obviously. The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare to be specific. Yeah, I was really happy that we went to Blackfriars, though, I was ready to go back right after, haha.
We left Blackfriars Bridge and next went to a Starbucks nearby, I got a grande Caramel Frappuccino, and guess what? The intranet actually worked there, so I bought the first two books in the spin off of the Vampire Academy Series, Bloodlines. After Starbucks we walked around, I bought another postcard (Postcard count 3). Then we got ice cream, and I'm not even kidding I saw a kid with an ice cream cone as long as my arm, that was just gross. Then after getting ice cream we went on a water boat tour down the Thames. The boat tour was definitely my favorite, the guy commenting was easy to understand and it was funny. Also, the wind downed the heat amount. We went to Buckingham Palace and watched the guards for a bit, it was rather boring, do those guards ever get hungry or hot on the job?
We almost missed the bus back to Oxford, my dad lost track of time, imagine what we'd do if we'd missed it. Actually, I did imagine it as we ran to the bus, I'm guessing we wouldn't sleep on benches but the image did pop into my head. I couldn't get into Bloodlines (click here to read my review on Bloodlines) on the bus, so I just slept on the way back too. So when we finally got back to Oxford it was dark but I absolutely refused to go back and not have dinner again, after walking all around London in the sun yeah, I was hungry. So we stopped at a food cart/truck. Have you ever had a gyros sandwich? Those things are amazing, we got something similar to that at the food truck thing. Pita bread, spicy/sweet sauce, lamb, mayonnaise, salad. Yummy. It was delicious. The fries, excuse me, chips, where pretty good too. Zia and I had already eaten 1 1/2 of the sandwiches before my dad actually came out to eat.
See you guys at part three :) 

Europe 2014 (Iceland)

I went on a two week trip to Europe this summer, going to Iceland, England and Scotland. It was a new experience. Honestly, I was more interested in my books than the sight seeing, but I'm always more interested in books. We first went to Iceland, staying in a bed and breakfast in Reykjavik for two days. Actually, the first place we went was New York City, surprisingly enough, that was the first time I'd ever been to NYC. We stayed with my mom's friends from college, Neal and Jane. It was fun going around New York for the day, even if it was really hot out. My sister, Zia and I, went in our first taxi, it was interesting... We got dropped off by where Neal and Jane live but, uh, we walked the wrong way for a while before realizing that we had to walk the opposite direction to get to the apartment... For dinner Neal and Jane took us out to their favorite Italian restaurant, it was cool, especially since we got to sit downstairs in the basement to eat, it was a very authentic Italian restaurant, too. For the sleeping arrangements I slept on the top floor because Zia would probably like to be closer to our parents when we sleep, it was nice, except for it was storming for the first twenty minutes and since I was on the top I heard it. Very loudly. While we were in New York I visited the Strand bookstore, getting a book box set which is still, unfortunately, in New York, I really need to go back and get that some time. I also went to Times Square, around the statue of liberty, and walked around New York for a while. We went on a Water Taxi, too. Sitting on the top was really hot and I'll admit that I may or may not have almost fallen asleep quite a few times. The next morning we were driven to an airport and surprisingly enough security didn't take too long. Though, the plane ride to Iceland was a long six hours. 

On the way to Iceland, I finished Frost Bite by Richelle Mead and started Shadow Kiss also by Richelle Mead. It was a really long time on the plane and since Iceland is six hours ahead of New York, I was pretty jet lagged for the two days we were in Iceland. Well, technically one day and two halves. After renting a car and driving maybe an hour to a half an hour to the bed and breakfast it was already around two in the morning, Icelandic time. Meaning it was like ten in my head. By the time we were all settled in in the apartment we were staying in, it was three Icelandic time. I couldn't go to sleep for a while, actually I'm pretty sure I fell asleep after the sun rose. Needless to say it was really hard to get up before breakfast closed at 9:30 (Or was it 10?). The Icelandic breakfast seemed a little bland to me, maybe it's just because none of the flavory stuff appealed to my taste, because I had some meats, which would be deli meats in America, and some cheese for breakfast, the meats were pretty bland. It was rather disappointing. So anyway on the one full day we had in Iceland my parents decided we should go do some sightseeing, go around the golden circle or something like that. Zia and I weren't as interested but we went along because we had to.
You could probably tell from the name that Iceland was colder than America, I got pretty cold sometimes, especially because the whole time we were in Iceland it was wet and rainy. So we visited a geyser place, a place where there were two tectonic plates and the strongest waterfall in Iceland (or was it the world???), it took a couple hours actually to get around. The lunch was really expensive, too, it was like $50 US for two personal pizzas and a sandwich. the geysers had hot water and smelled somewhat of sulfur. Anyway, by the time we got back to the bed and breakfast we were all tired because we were really jet lagged plus we'd been out sightseeing and it was tiring. I think we just sort of rested for an hour, well, everyone else rested while I read Spirit Bound by Richelle Mead. Oh, I shouldn't forget to mention this, so my dad bought adapters before we came, for the English plug, but he didn't get one for the Icelandic one. -_- My kindle fire is the first generation, and I didn't bring my kindle. My kindle fire, being the annoying picky reading tablet that it is, will not charge on the USB thing in the plane, I don't know why, I think if we travel more I'm going to need to get a new reading tablet. So after reading it for like seven hours straight the night before, it was dying by day 2 of the trip. Luckily the bed and breakfast had adapters so they lent us one. I was sitting in the kitchen reading my kindle a lot during my time in Iceland.
After resting for a while we went out and walked around Reykjavik, there was a really cool cathedral right behind where we were staying. We went to a restaurant that one of my parents' friends recommended to us. It was really good, and like everything else, pretty expensive. After dinner, my dad walked Zia back to the bed and breakfast, while I pulled my mom into the nearest bookstore. In a different country? Let's buy books there in a language I don't speak. Yeah, I have good priorities. Well, some of the books were in english, but most of them weren't. It was really interesting seeing the book covers of my well-loved books in a different country. Except the books here were really expensive, maybe $30 US for a paperback book. Yeah, I never did end up buying any books in Europe.
 Anyway, after my dad came back to the bookstore, my mom walked back to the bed and breakfast while my dad and I went to a different bookstore and I got a postcard. We then went to the small, I don't know what to call it, food store, I guess. There we picked up a container of ice cream, for those of you who didn't know, ice cream is a vital part of my existence. The ice cream in Iceland (Yes I did insist that we get ice cream in Iceland, it's practically required if you visit Iceland to get ice cream) is different, it has a slightly more ice-y feel over creamy. It was good none the less. If you've never been to Iceland, you might not know this, but during the summer it stays light out day and night and during the winter it stays dark. So it was rather hard to fall asleep with that much light, not to mention our curtains sucked and there was a light shining through the window. So the next day, we got up, got breakfast, packed up and left the ned and breakfast. Though, before we went to the airport we visited The Blue Lagoon, a giant hot spring. Mmhmmm, I really liked it there. Especially considering how cold it was in Iceland, the hot spring was even more amazing. So we checked in and got bathrobes, towels, a take home gift, and these bracelets. The bracelets were really cool, they were water proof and were the keys to your lockers in the locker rooms where you changed, also, if you bought a drink or a face wash at the bar in the hot spring, then they would take a device, tap it to your bracelet and it would charge you so you paid before you left.
There's something in the water that really dries out your hair, so you're told to put your hair up in like a bun and put conditioner in it so it won't dry out, they provided soap and conditioner in the bathrooms. So my hair looks really oily in all the pictures, also, if you've seen my hair, you'd know that there is A LOT of it, it's really long so the bun kept falling out. Luckily for me, though, it didn't fall out while we were in the hot spring, otherwise I probably would've flipped out. Getting pictures for this was REALLY gold because standing outside, in Iceland, in a bikini is obviously going to be cold. Plus my dad can't take pictures with the IPhone so we had to take a bunch. Finally getting into the hot spring was a relief, especially because my sister was being picky about the pictures and made me pose for about a bijillion. So with the thing we got to get in we all got one free drink, face scrub and face mask from the bar. I got a strawberry smoothie, it was delicious, Zia and my dad got blueberry and I don't remember what my mom got, you see, I'm typing this like two or three weeks later so I don't have the perfect memory of this trip, I guess it would help if I looked in my vacation journal but I'm too lazy to do so. I definitely enjoyed The Blue Lagoon, though, if you've ever been in a hot tub during the winter, it's a similar feeling, you overheat after a while. Also, since I'm so short, I almost sunk under in some places. After leaving the Blue Lagoon we went back to the airport to fly our three hour trip to London.
I decided to split this blog post up, because if my part on Iceland is that long, we stayed in the other places for longer, so I don't want to make these posts WAY to long, so this is part one :). 

Homemade Simple Mac-and-Cheese

Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted anything, I haven't been able to come up with something to post. Lately I've been eating a lot of mac and cheese, and I've been trying to perfect a quick recipe for homemade mac and cheese. So far this is the easiest and best flavored mac and cheese I've made:
1 1/2 cups of dry pasta
shredded cheddar cheese
1 T margarine
milk
salt
pepper

Now, my favorite pasta to use for this is shaped pasta, I love shaped pasta. I'm weird, okay? I like to use the Elk Pasta you can buy at Ikea for $2.99, I'm obsessed with this pasta, it's ELK SHAPED! Haha, like I said, I'm weird. Any pasta will work fine, though, noodles may not be the best, more like bow ties or elbow macaroni or something in small shape. Cook that. Right after you drain the pasta while it's still hot dump it into a medium microwavable bowl. Next add 1/4-1/3 a cup of milk into the bowl along with about half a cup of cheddar cheese, or how ever much cheese you want in it. After adding the margarine, stick in the microwave and cook on high for one minute. Now all you have to do is just thoroughly mix the content of the bowl together until it's well blended. Add salt and pepper to taste and enjoy.
(Remember this is a really simple and easy recipe so it's not made to taste gourmet)