Where in the World Wednesday: Chicago, 1999

It's Classy in Philadelphia's Where in the World Wednesday!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world... it doesn't have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling. It might even be somewhere in your own hometown! Feel free to get creative and post where you WISH you could travel, old scanned pictures of vacations from years ago or even feel free to repeat a destination with different photos! Get creative.

In the late summer of 1999, after my trip to Europe with my French class, my whole family (me, my parents, and my sister) went to Illinois to visit Northwestern. My two summers there for smart camp convinced me that I had to go to college there. I didn't want to go anywhere else.

Since we were in the area, we spent some time in Chicago. That summer, the city was crawling with cows. Yes, really.

See?


Remember when shortalls were cool? Yeah, me neither.
We definitely hit up FAO Schwarz:


I like Star Wars and Teletubbies. True story. Also true: I still have and use those shoes and that purse.
I applied to Northwestern early decision that October. I also applied to Michigan State, just in case. December 15, 1999 was the fateful day when schools could send letters to the people they'd accepted.

Northwestern didn't want me.

Nor did they want my friend, who was valedictorian of our class, an Eagle Scout, had good test scores, and was basically perfect. Learning that he didn't get in softened the blow a little bit, but it was still devastating.

At the time, and for many years afterward, it was my biggest failure.

These days, I don't see it so much as a failure, but as fate.

If I had gone to Northwestern, I never would have gotten my second bachelor's degree. I never would have interned at the Michigan Democratic Party. I never would have realized that my future was not in journalism, but in advocacy. I never would have moved to Virginia, and I never would have met Jason.

I can't imagine my life without him.

I have never been happier to have failed.

Seniority, part 2

As a followup to yesterday's senior picture post for Bev's challenge, I want to share a few more photos today.

Not only did I hate my senior pictures, they also weren't usable for the school yearbook. The photographer swore they'd be fine. But of course, they weren't.

So I had to get a second headshot taken. This time I went to the fancy studio in town--the place my sister got her senior pictures taken. I wish we had bought some of these, because this one shot turned out better than any of the pictures from my senior session. It scanned like crap because I had to smoosh my yearbook into the scanner, but it looks more me than any of the ones I posted yesterday. The dimple is in full effect!

By the time my college yearbook picture was taken four years later, I had more going on than just the dimple.

Way more. Indeed, the fat was in full effect. My face had ballooned to epic proportions. I blame the free bagels and cream cheese at my coffee shop job. And the free half and half that I occasionally regularly dumped into my free coffee. With all the carbs and fatty cow's milk I gobbled down, I was quite the heifer. I have no idea what was going on with the lipstick. I guess I was trying to draw attention away from my massive chin. Mission not accomplished.

When I finished my third year of college, I had enough credits to graduate with my journalism degree. But I was only 20 years old and totally unprepared to go be a grownup... not to mention that I knew that I didn't actually want to be a journalist. So I decided to get a second degree in women's studies to buy myself some time.

That extra year yielded me a bit more perspective and a lot more lard. Had I gone to grad school, I probably would have gained another 50 pounds. Luckily for my figure, I was all set with school after 16 years of summers spent at smart camp, testing out of high school classes, and rushing through college's condensed summer semesters. My horrific grades my last semester definitely showed how completely I had checked out of academia.

All's well that ends well, of course. It took me a couple of months after graduation, but eventually I found a job I like and a man I love.

And speaking of that man, this is Jason's boot camp graduation picture. It was 2003. He weighed 135 pounds. By the time we met in 2005, he had bulked back up to a healthy 175.

Sadly, I don't have any pictures of Jason from high school. He didn't get a yearbook and his parents never bought school pictures.

I know, isn't that tragic? Who doesn't buy school pictures of their kid? To be fair, he says that he didn't photograph well as a teenager, but I still would have bought one for posterity's sake.

Oh well... It's all the more reason for us to get lots and lots of pictures taken of the two of us!

Foodie Friday: Bubbles and Bananas

It's Foodie Friday! Foodie Friday is my weekly feature that gives you a window into my kitchen. I love to cook, I love to eat, I love to read cookbooks, and I love to inspire people to give vegan food a chance. Thus, Foodie Friday was whipped up and baked to perfection.

I already shared my Easter goodies with you, so it's an abbreviated version of Foodie Friday this week.

I saw an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay on Food Network last week in which the featured dish was pad thai, and my instantaneous craving told me that I had to try making the 1,000 Vegan Recipes version again soon. This time I doubled the amount of sauce called for in the recipe because last time the rice noodles soaked it right up. It was delicious, and the extra sauce won Jason over.


In my coffee shop days during high school and college, I made myself a lot of Italian sodas. What's not to love about them? They're bubbly, colorful, and sweet! While browsing the shelves at World Market recently, Jason asked if we could make our own Italian sodas at home. Of course we can! So we came home with bottles of strawberry and vanilla Torani flavored syrup. Here's how you make an Italian soda: fill a normal-sized drinking glass with chilled club soda, and pour in two ounces or so of your desired syrup flavor. Yes, it really is that simple! I used 1 1/2 ounces of strawberry syrup and a 1/2 ounce of vanilla syrup. My favorite Italian soda flavor of all time is kiwi. I haven't had it in years, but trust me: It is divine. I might have to order myself a bottle online if I can't buy some locally.

Jason has a bad habit of asking me to buy him food items and then ignoring them until they're decomposing on our counter. This week's rotten food of choice was bananas. If you know me at all, you know that I hate throwing away food. HATE. It is so irresponsible and such a waste of money!

I was not going to let those stinky bananas get the best of me. I consulted my cookbook shelf to find a banana bread recipe for which I already had all of the ingredients, and I settled on the one in The Compassionate Cook, a charming, no-frills little paperback chock-full of simple yet delicious recipes. I used my wide-mouth loaf pan to make a Jason-sized loaf. He liked it so much that it's already gone. Maybe getting me to bake was his plan with the bananas all along.

Where in the World Wednesday: Study Abroad Wrap-Up

It's Classy in Philadelphia's Where in the World Wednesday!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world... it doesn't have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling. It might even be somewhere in your own hometown!

Over the past several weeks I've recounted just a few (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) of my memories from the study abroad trip I took in 2002.

After our week in Scotland, we returned to London for the last week of the program. And like the Scotland week, I didn't manage to get any pictures taken of myself. Fail!

So instead I'm just going to wrap it all up and tie a bow around it.

I saw six theatre shows in five weeks: Les Misérables, We Will Rock You (for which I got standing room only tickets and danced around in the back of the theatre the whole time), The Vagina Monologues, My Fair Lady, The Phantom of the Opera, and My One and Only. I spent a ton of money on tickets, but what better to spend money on than live theatre? While my classmates were out drinking, I was going on dates with myself.



There were a lot of firsts on this trip: first time getting drunk, for example. My last week in London I had another couple of firsts. July 29 was a really rough day for me. I was terribly homesick and probably overtired, and all of that somehow manifested itself in a panic attack that seemed to last all day, causing me to cry in my room for four hours. Yay me!

By August 2 I was fully recovered and back up to my old tricks, which included a night out at a bar to celebrate the end of our class. While there, I had the Pants Incident of 2002. I can't put details here lest they fall into the wrong hands, but it involved my pants, a Macedonian named Tony, and a public shaming on the streets of London by one of my male classmates. It's one of the funniest and most embarrassing things that's ever happened to me. I summed it up in my paper journal by saying, "I wish I were a bad girl."

Alas, I am not. (So stop worrying, Mommy.) No one saw my Britney that day.

A couple of days later I was on my way home, pants and all, waiting for my flight at London Gatwick Airport. A flight that never took off because the luggage handlers backed their truck into the plane and damaged it so much that it wasn't flight-worthy. Bravo, Northwest Airlines!

After much confusion and a long wait to get our bags back, a few of the people from my class were given meal vouchers and free rooms at the Hilton connected to the airport. One more night in London! I spent it using all of the free stuff that Northwest gave me and getting a good night's sleep (no more pants incidents).

The next day we hopped the pond back to Detroit, where I was expecting to find my family waiting anxiously. EXCEPT THAT THEY WEREN'T THERE.

My friends were picked up one by one until I was the only person left. Finally I called home, and found out that no one had come to get me because the flight arrival time listed on the internet was wrong. Northwest was really going for the gold with this one.

After what seemed like FOREVER my mom and dad showed up to take me home. I'll let my words from my paper journal sum it up:

The whole ride I just wanted to see Velv. And I finally did! And it was wonderful, and he still remembered me and loved me. I'm just SO glad to be home. This was an amazing experience, but I love my home.

Where in the World Wednesday: Scotland

It's Classy in Philadelphia's Where in the World Wednesday!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world... it doesn't have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling. It might even be somewhere in your own hometown!

On July 21, 2002, my Michigan State study abroad group left London for a week in Edinburgh, Scotland. We stayed at the University of Edinburgh's dorms near Holyrood Park, and woke up to this spectacular view every day:


Arthur's Seat!
I climbed the hill after a couple of days of admiring it from afar, and it was so worth it. It was lush and green... and crawling with giant black slugs. I poked around some ruins and took this picture of the city skyline at dusk, just before my camera's batteries died:


Other activities included a class trip to the BBC in Glasgow, visiting Edinburgh Castle, dinner at the Hard Rock Edinburgh, and seeing The Art of Star Wars exhibit.

I somehow didn't manage to get a picture of myself the whole week!

Where in the World Wednesday: London, part 2

It's Classy in Philadelphia's Where in the World Wednesday!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world... it doesn't have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling. It might even be somewhere in your own hometown!

After our quick and dirty Paris trip, my MSU study abroad buddies and I jumped right back into the swing of things in London with class and a tour of the BBC Television Centre.

In 2002, a student pass for the tour cost £4.95. Today, it costs £7. How about that?


Again, what is happening with my shirt? Was I having some sort of weird peasant girl stage?
The bag in my hand contains the CD recording of Party at the Palace, a concert that was held at Buckingham Palace the previous month in celebration of Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee (ruling for 50 years). I still listen to it.

Later in the week I had a hankering for a haircut, so I gathered two other girls who were itching for a trim and we headed to a salon that didn't look disgusting. I ended up with a drastic change. I went from my natural dirty blond to red! I had always wanted to make the transformation, and without my mother there to forbid it, I threw caution to the wind.


The redhead picture was taken in my dorm room after the new school year had started. The lighting was horrible--I promise the color was way better than that.
I loved it! Not surprisingly, my mom hated it. I have very few pictures of my red hair, and it was gone by Thanksgiving, but I remember the time fondly. For once in my life, I was a rebel.

Where in the World Wednesday: Paris, 2002

It's Classy in Philadelphia's Where in the World Wednesday!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world... it doesn't have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling. It might even be somewhere in your own hometown!

After my MSU study abroad program's day trip to Wales, I was anxious to get back to London to prepare for another trip--this time a weekend jaunt to Paris for Bastille Day, July 12-14, 2002. After going to France in high school, getting back during my study abroad trip was a priority of mine. That I was able to plan my return for a holiday weekend and get twelve other people from my program to come along was an added bonus.

Unfortunately for us, things didn't go well on this trip. On the first day, one girl forgot her passport and had to get a later Chunnel train, our hotel flooded necessitating a move to a different hotel, and we got lost late at night when the Métro had shut down and our cab driver dumped us off in the rain at some random street corner nowhere near our replacement hotel.

That day had its nice moments, though, like chilling on the grass near the Eiffel Tower:


Please do not judge me for my seriously questionable choice of shirt.


The whole France group minus the girl who was taking the picture.
We did eventually find our way back to the hotel that night, after I took charge of the situation and used my superb linguistic skills to get directions at a McDonald's. The night had deteriorated to the point that one of the girls was about to have a panic attack and another was falling-down drunk, so we were all glad to just go to bed.

The next day started out well enough, with some sightseeing, shopping with the hoity-toity people on the Avenue des Champs Elysées, and dinner at an Italian restaurant, but things quickly soured when we went out that night to see the Bastille Day fireworks at the Eiffel Tower. I somehow lost my Métro ticket on the train over there and got slapped with a 20-euro fine that I had to borrow money to pay. When the subway police finally let me go and we got up to street level, the crowd was out of control and people were throwing little exploding noisemakers at us. We found the other half of our group, who'd been waiting for us at the Eiffel Tower, and they said things were even worse there--they'd had firecrackers thrown at them and one guy had nearly gotten into a fistfight. Were we that obviously American? To this day I can't figure out why we were targeted--it was before the U.S. military invaded Iraq, French people started hating Americans, and the U.S. House of Representatives changed French fries to freedom fries. Needless to say, we hightailed it back to our hotel before any more trouble could find us and we were all happy to say au revoir to Paris the next morning.

I still love France, though, and I'll never forget that weekend, the good and the bad! Plus, I took some of my favorite pictures of the whole trip there:



I'll be back Paris, you wait and see. And next time, I'm bringing my husband. Stockpile your firecrackers.

Where in the World Wednesday: Wales

It's Classy in Philadelphia's Where in the World Wednesday!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world... it doesn't have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling. It might even be somewhere in your own hometown!

Last week we traveled to London for the beginning of my college study abroad program. This week we're heading to Wales, where my program, Mass Media in Great Britain, spent one day during the trip. July 11, 2002!

We were so busy that day that we didn't get a chance to see much, but I did manage to sneak a few pictures in while we were at the BBC Wales studio in Cardiff. Or, as the Welsh would say, BBC Cymru in Caerdydd.

And here's where my memory fails. I can't for the life of me remember what we did at BBC Wales or what else we did that day. I chronicled it in my study abroad blog that died with Diary-X, but I didn't say anything much about it in my paper journal other than that we went. The lesson? Write it down on paper or back up your digital files, because you won't remember a thing in a few years.

The one thing I do have from that day is the only picture I got of the whole group together:


The only thing I have left from that outfit is the shoes.
Join me again next week for more European travels!

Where in the World Wednesday: London

It's Where in the World Wednesday!

The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world... it doesn't have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling. It might even be somewhere in your own hometown!

- Classy in Philadelphia

This week, I'm rewinding to the good old days of college. In the summer of 2002 I studied abroad for five weeks, June 30 to August 4. My program was called Mass Media in Great Britain. We started out in London, where we were housed in the University of London dorms. This is a few of us in the lobby of our dorm the day we arrived:

We're all looking pretty rough after our trans-Atlantic flight.
Here we are on July 4 posing for the obligatory red phone booth shot:

That's me in the middle.
That evening some of us met at the University of London Union--ULU for short--for some Independence Day adult beverages. We would have used any excuse to go out and party, but celebrating a national holiday in the country whose defeat the day symbolizes was a given. At 19 years old, I was not much of a drinker. Actually, I wasn't a drinker at all. This picture is pretty representative of the whole night--blurry. I got drunk, spilled a drink all over myself and my friend, lost my dorm keys, and basically looked like an idiot. Yeah, not my finest moment. Live and learn, right?


Duh, whaaaaa?
Later that night a group of us went down to the U.S. Embassy in London to see what was going on there. All we found was a dark office building guarded by a man with a a semi-automatic weapon. I don't know what we were expecting, but then again, most of us were drunk. At the time though, it seemed like the best idea ever.

By July 6 we had all recovered from our Fourth of July festivities and were back exploiting the phone booths.

There were four of us in there.
Join me again next Wednesday for more of my across-the-pond adventures!