Monday, July 21, 2003

It has now been 59 days since I left the United States. In that time, I've visited Rome, Florence, Milan, Sorrento, Capri, Interlachen (Switzerland), Bern, Strasbourg, Kassel (Germany), Paris, Luxembourg, Brussels, London, Oxford, and this weekend's entry, Salisbury and Stonehenge. For those of you who are counting, that's 6 capital cities and 7 countries. This coming weekend, I'll add one more to each of those, as John and I head to Shannon, and drive our way across Ireland to Dublin. I have 11 more days here, and four until my finals on Friday.

I managed to have dinner with my professor friend on Saturday. I gave him that list (and details of my once-in-a-lifetime visit to the British Open) at dinner, and his response was simply "My goodness, I just listened to that list and I'm tired." He's not the only one. The only thing suffering more than me right now is my bank account, which is beginning to resemble the Sahara desert. Going to the Open didn't help, as I dropped £160 buying stuff for the family back home (a shirt, a hat, and a green repair tool for dad, who's a big golf fan, a hat for each of my nephews, and stuff for me).

I've met some nice people along the way, learned more about people who I should be hanging out with back home, and met some people who I just can't stand. Of course, some of those in the latter category are people whom I hung out with over the last year, but most are people I'll be having class with come the fall. So that should be interesting.

All in all, I miss listening to my CDs most of all. And driving my car and my motorcycle. And, of course, I miss my family.......

But so far, I've managed to enjoy the whole trip. I've taken over 200 photographs, which will cost an enormous amount of money to develop. And I promise to post as many as I can for those of you who've been living vicariously through my these last - six? seven? - weeks. And I promise stories of this trip for a long time to come.....or until I get a more interesting life back home, which may not take long....