I'm supposed to be studying for my finals but I got distracted while reading the news on a break. I'm super embarrassed to admit I knew absolutely nothing about the Large Hadron Collider that Science is about to flip on tomorrow, but luckily my generation has created a way to answer most questions about complex scientific shit. It's called YouTube.

Some brilliant science writer working at CERN made this awesome rap. Dad, you're gonna love it.

I realized that I never really finished writing about my travels abroad, and for the sake of actually finishing a project, I'm going to try to fill you in.

So let's see... yes. I went to London, Oxford, Paris, Venice, Prague, Paris, GREECE, Paris, Amsterdam, Den Haag, Paris, and then home. In three weeks, I believe. Maybe four. But who's counting?

LONDON:
[this first part is from an unpublished post I wrote immediately after our return to Paris]
"So. Meghann and I went to London. We took the Chunnel there - well, we took a bus through the Chunnel, which was similar to going on Space Mountain but at the same time completely different. Mostly, they just put the bus in a big box and shut off the air supply and moved the box under the water so we couldn't see anything. It was anti-climactic and we were disappointed. Oh. This was AFTER we had to go through the most stupid customs ever. So right before we get on or in the Chunnel, I'm not sure which is correct, they stop the bus so we can all get off, grab all our bags, wait in line to go through security as if it were an airport, bag scanner and metal detector and all. Then we put all our shit back on the bus, hopped back on, eagerly anticipating what we thought would be one swell ride. Well to add insult to what would soon be injury, the bus driver closed the doors, turned on the gas, drove TEN METERS, turned the bus off, and told us all to get off again so we could go through fucking passport check/customs/whatever. It was absurd. But I did get another stamp on my passport, which is actually rarer than you would think for all the traveling that I've been doing [Schengen agreement].
Anyway, London was overwhelming for me. There were SO many people speaking SO many different languages and some bastardized form of American which I guess they call English, which might as well be a different language altogether sometimes, for the variety of accents and differences in vocabulary. It was cloudy, hot, humid, and sticky. And there were many, many bugs a-flight so of course I was displeased about that. But we walked around, ate some foods, saw some museums, went to Harrods, bought some cupcakes, you know. We met up with Matt and Joe and some of their friends that night when we sort of went to a bar or two and somehow ended up getting to Oxford around 4am, meaning sleep started around 5 or 5.30. I don't know how that happened."

OXFORD:
There was some sort of Jesus festival that morning taking place right outside the window that was right next to the bed in which Meghann and I were attempting to sleep. I don't remember what it was for, but there was a lot of music involved, with several individuals who didn't get the joke when someone told them they were lead-singer material. Regardless, it was a horribly unpleasant wake-up call. After a little more sleep and a little breakfast in a dining hall that looking straight out of Harry Potter, it was time for a tour, and then time to punt. Oh yes. Our friend Joseph had cleverly arranged this activity in advance, and for the next few hours Meghann and I proceeded to lounge and watch the mens try to punt. Oh and I spilled Pimms all over the white part of my dress. [I really didn't like Pimms].
I believe after this we went back and napped and then had Indian food for dinner, which was delicious. The boys had to do school things and we had to wake up early the next morning to take the bus back to London, so it was an early night.
We spent the next day in London trekking around, trying to find the Old Globe and the Tate Gallery while being tired and hot, before finding the bus that would take us to the airport. We didn't have time to exchange our currency, so we decided to splurge on the plane. And by splurge, I mean buying a lot of champagne and candy bars [oh Mars bars, how I miss you...] to go with our gourmet cupcakes from Harrods. We keep it classy like that.
We got back to Paris at night and I believe I had a day in which to re-pack and prepare for the next week or so I would be spending with my parents in Venice and Prague...

I am an incredibly lucky individual in that I can say that I haven't had my heart broken yet. I've learned that you can actually break your own heart, by suffering the consequences of your own rash actions and watching the spirit of someone you love break; by hurting someone you love, you hurt yourself as well. While this may all be fairly obvious to the seasoned individual, I'm still just a kid, so you can shake your head with bittersweet amusement at my naive musings. I probably would, too.
I've also watched the hearts of friends break and have been helpless to heal the wounds. The worst thing about the deepest wounds is that only you can heal yourself. Other people can be there for you to lean on as you figure out how to deal with your (hopefully) temporary emotional handicap, but they can't make you learn your lessons or push along the maturation of your character.

I'm fairly proud to say that my life is unusually drama-free for someone my age and my gender, but in the very recent past, I've had a falling out with someone who meant the world to me. My roommate and amazing friend Abbie told me during our first summer together at UCSB that the people that know you the best and love you the most can inflict the worst pain or the most damage with the slightest of words. Since then, I have been witness to this effect. I've been surprised with my intensely emotional reaction to multiple altercations with the previously mentioned individual. Without going into unnecessary detail, suffice to say that I don't suffer disrespect well, and even when it appears under times of extreme duress, there's just no excuse for treating people without a certain level of common decency. So when this person, who was close to my heart, told me repeatedly that they couldn't stand to be in the same room as me, that they didn't want to see me for an undefined period of time, and swore at me with the intensity of a bitter sailor, it affected me.

I credit years of teenage angst, intense fighting with my parents, and the brave therapists who have mediated some of these fights for the fact that I now have the ability to recognize when my emotions are out of control, take responsibility for my words, and collect myself so I can obtain the ability to rationally analyze the situation. Years of screaming matches and tears eventually taught me that the best way to come out of a fight is to never stoop to low levels, to retain a calm disposition, and to explain myself as simply as possible using neutral words. In spite of all this, it's still hard for me not to lash out sometimes, especially when I feel like I've been hurt purposefully.

In these recent altercations, my first reaction to being hurt was to get violently angry. Those that know me know I have as much physical fight in me as a snail, but I can use my words fairly well in a conversation or an argument, and when I let my temper get the best of me, I can be vicious.

[It's kind of humorous to me that the biggest fights I've been in during the last few years have all taken place entirely over AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM). I think it's easy to be mean over the internet because you don't have to see the reaction of the person you're slinging barbs and jabs at. My generation will have some interesting communication barriers to overcome.]

My ex-boyfriend recently informed me that he was seeing someone. We made a deal a while back not to talk to each other about other people unless "it meant something." Apparently, after a week of dating a girl that he and I met while studying abroad in Rome, it "meant something" to him, and for other legitimate personal reasons he decided to tell me about it. We broke up last November, and all through our joint semester abroad I kept waiting for the bomb to drop that he had hooked up with someone in our program. It never did. So when he showed up at my door, looked me in the eye and told me about this girl, I expected it to sting like a slap in the face - I didn't expect it to be a full-body blow. It was, and I was powerless to reign in everything I was feeling as I watched him walk back across the street to his apartment.

For the record, my ex and I had stayed very close friends starting about 2 months after our breakup. All through our stay in Rome and until about two weeks ago, I still considered him my best friend.

Now I feel like I’ve lost my best friend. This might have been a long-time coming; something I was too naive to anticipate or too in-denial to accept. The specifics are unimportant, but there are now holes where he used to occupy my time and my thoughts; holes that he has as well, that he’s filling with some other girl. He was my first love, and my first boyfriend, actually, so this is all virgin territory for me, and accepting that someone else is stepping into -and actively pushing me out of- my former role as the most important girl in his life is looking like an impossibly bitter pill to swallow. I’m a jealous person, which I won’t even try to deny, so that doubles the fun.

It used to make me quite literally sick to my stomach to think about it. He and I took a lot of road trips together in the past three years, and I didn't know how to deal when I found out that she would be kicking me out of my co-pilot’s seat where I had spent dozens of hours and created ten times that many great memories. She would be meeting his parents, whom I adore. She would be sleeping in their house, in the bed that was so familiar and comfortable to me. She would be taking my place in a group of friends. She would be the "new me," and my biggest fear is that she’ll be a better me than I was.

As a first-time girlfriend and an only child used to looking out for only myself and opening up to almost no one, being in a relationship and having to put someone else first or equal to myself in my priorities was an enormous challenge. I have several memories I’m really not proud of, and I made more than my fair share of mistakes. He was more than patient with me the entire time, and put up with a lot of shit I ended up giving him. I’m fairly certain I could not have had a better first boyfriend, first love, or first relationship. He left me with unfairly high standards for anyone who would follow him. I am endlessly grateful to him. When we were together, I felt like the best part of myself when I was around him; I felt like he challenged me, taught me about how to look at the world, how to look at myself, and how to treat other people. I grew up a significant amount during my relationship with him.

---

I wrote this post on August 22nd at 2 o'clock in the morning but left it unfinished and unpublished. I've gone back and removed or edited a few things, but the post is largely unchanged.

However, I would like to add something:

Through talks with my amazing friends who have been here for me in more ways than I thought possible, and through many lonely nights with a pencil or laptop in hand to pen my thoughts, I've come to terms with the situation. Basically, I can't make him care about me. I can't make him want me around, and I can't make him miss me. Having accepting this and the fact that our friendship really may be damaged beyond repair, it's time to take a deep breath and move on. So this is me moving on; following advice my Dad has given me since I was a little girl in Colorado, I'm taking it one step at a time.