Currently :: June, July, & August

If I were a more brilliant person, I would title this edition "Retroactively" because that's a bigger and more accurate word for this right here, but what can I say. Brain cells have been zapped by too many days out in the direct sunlight. Thanks, Obama.

Without further ado... I have been:

WATCHING // so many beautiful sunsets, and so many beautiful giantesses (those Eastern Europeans! so tall! so mighty! I felt particularly midgety!) strolling down Stradun, the main street in Dubrovnik. Once back in USA Land, we beelined for the movie theater and checked off Trainwreck and Mission Impossible 5 Million (which was surprisingly impressive). Now? Finishing off Parenthood and FRIENDS.

EATING // well, everything. I went from daily English breakfasts to a personally curated Paris goodies tour to carbs ahoy in Italy to seafood in Croatia, meats in Bosnia & Herzegovina, too many brunches in LA and SF (there was one day in San Francisco that we had three breakfasts. Three.) and now to perching on the kitchen counter and snagging samples from my mom's stovetop whenever she has her back turned.

WANTING // to be on the road again, and to be moved in and settled in my new apartment at the same time. Can there be a happy medium?

PLANNING // a bridal shower! I'm single-handedly buying Etsy. Not even a tassel here and a cakestand there. No. I'm buying Etsy. All of it. And also, I'm arranging my new room, of course, so I'm also buying Amazon and maybe IKEA too because why let an excuse for meatballs go wasted.

READING // The Muse. I stumbled upon this career advice resource for millennials by accident, but think that we all need to be following it diligently. Does anyone else have any great career resources, columns, etc. to recommend? I've heard good things about Levo League as well. #GIRLBOSS. There have also been texts about Southeastern Europe, WWI, former Yugoslavia and its war in the 90s, etc. Notable: Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina (a pain, but... I *heard* it gets better, *cough*) and Aleksander Hemon's The Book of My Lives, which was really engaging! And! Hemon came to speak to us in Sarajevo, which was quite the treat.

MAKING // my own food. In a relative sense. Okay so maybe not yet, but I went from Googling "how to turn on a stove" two weeks ago to begging some lessons from my mom and my friend Leah to now scrambling up some pathetic eggs, cooking some passable pasta, and asking for a Crockpot.

SAYING // "sve je dobro u mome svijetu," which is Croatian for "all is well in my world." It was on the label of a very inspirational bottled water company that always had something interesting for us to read. I haven't learned a new language since high school Spanish and I forgot how frustrating and confusing it can be, but I've got to say that it's so much more enjoyable when you're immersed in it all day everyday!

NOTICING // how, although Europe... I mean Europe is Europe, the USA can be pretty great sometimes too. Free water. Target. In-N-Out. Friends in the same time zone. It can also be pretty awful sometimes, but... aren't we all.

MISSING // that girl up there. After four years of living together – some years in one suite, some years in one room, and this summer sometimes in one twin-sized bed as she was coughing up bronchitis germs all over me but I'll take my chances because HOTELS. ARE. EXPENSIVE. – it's kind of sad-weird not being two feet away from her and our Apple TV remote at all times. 

NEEDING // the heat and the humidity to peace the eff out. Sorry. (But I'm really not.)

LEARNING // not to be a broken record about this, but I spent two and a half weeks learning about former Yugoslavia – all the way, way back when it was under empire rule to WWI to the devastating war in the 90s, all from an Eastern perspective. Therein lies one of the most important lessons from this summer: to constantly challenge myself to be open-minded. I didn't ever know that I never knew. I kind of want to learn forever and forever and well shucks too bad, diploma's in hand get outta here.

FEELING // the in between. The gray area. Like I'm in transition. 

Happy Monday to all, and to all ... a venti double-shot?

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Oxford :: Returning To A Beloved Place

I now have a vendetta against those big red double-decker tour buses.

For a long time, I thought they were kind of cute. I quite enjoyed myself in Barcelona when we took them. And my sister's old apartment in San Francisco was on the first floor of a building right around the corner from Alamo Square and the Painted Ladies, so anytime I stopped by "to say hi" aka raid her freezer, I'd be almost eye-to-eye with all the folks on the top level of those buses passing by. It was the closest I ever came to experiencing fame.

Taking one of these buses was on Kelly's London wishlist, and I was completely for it. Don't get me wrong, some parts of it I found to be extremely valuable. The tour guide, for example, pointed out the hotel Kate Middleton stayed at the night before her wedding AND JK Rowling's rumored neighborhood. Priceless information to me.

But ... then ... WA:JDKFJDK:FS ... a combined effort from inconsistent schedules, terrible TERRIBLE traffic, and needing to wait twenty minutes at the last stop before the bus can start looping again ... I had to miss my intended departure to Oxford time of 2:00pm by over an hour. Which made me arrive at MooMoo's Milkshakes three minutes after it closed. I've never known such heartbreak. Never.

Despite that major hiccup, alongside encounters with gruff bus drivers and Cassandra not being able to come with me (the only words she uttered all day were "well are the doctors even good in Greece" in response to the question of "should we get you a doctor?" so needless to say, bed all day was right where she belonged), it was lovely being back.

The beautiful drive through the countryside, hanging out and catching up with my lovely friend Charlie who brought me straight to G&D's for consolation ice cream, meeting her friends who were all horrified at The Royals trailers I made them watch (Do Americans know this is completely trash though?!?!), sneaking into Stanford House, walking around Christchurch Meadows, grabbing my go-to sandwich at Olive's, marveling at how ... marvelous... it is not to have to wear three layers and rainboots, and remembering just how spectacularly beautiful the town and university is... oh boy, do I miss it.

It's disconcerting, coming back to a place and having it be the most familiar thing in the world yet also the strangest. Muscle memory takes you straight to your crosswalk, but did it really always take the pedestrian light this long to turn green? I thought this storefront was two doors down, I used to go to that place every day for morning coffee ... oh, look at that new shop! The weirdest.

For more Oxford :: here, here, and here.

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London :: Cheerio Again, Poppet

March of last year when I last left England after ten weeks of studying at Oxford, I got all misty-eyed thinking that I likely wouldn't be seeing the rolling pastures of grazing sheep and the bustling Underground and hearing "cheers, mate" for a good, long while. Five years, maybe. Three, if I'm really lucky.

Joke's on me. Just one year later, my roommate and I were hurriedly booking flights to London and then back from Athens for the summer, willing Kayak to load a little faster because dammit we were late for Mexican night at dinner. (We'll come to semi-regret this rushed decision later, stay tuned for Greece.)

And then, we waited. On June 13th, we packed up our entire room and shoved all of it into the Mustang. On June 14th, we graduated college. On June 15th, we drove all the way from Stanford down to Orange County and unloaded only our Europe carry-ons. On June 16th, bright and early, we arrived at LAX, had a brief connection in Canada, and then on June 17th around noon, I spied Big Ben and the River Thames from the plane window and got all sorts of jittery.

Oh, except one tiny little problem:

A few weeks before graduation, Cassandra got a cold. A "cold." Long story short, it got so bad that on graduation day, she went to three different doctors. Two hours before our drive down south (which she had to drive the entire way, hacking away one organ at a time, because I'm #incompetent), a doctor handed her a bottle of antibiotics, an inhaler with 200 puffs, a diagnosis of possible pneumonia and possible bronchitis, and a "good luck, sista!"

You should ask her if she enjoyed London.

She can tell you all about the hotel room.

With Cassandra out for the count, her mom (who joined us for the first half of our trip) and I really bonded. After a customs line forty minutes too long, an Uber fiasco where we and the driver were walking in circles around the terminal trying to find each other, our hotel room not being ready for like two hours, it was mid-afternoon by the time we were ready to head out.

"Let's go to Kensington Palace, it's right down the road. Three minutes," I promised Kelly, eager to visit my good friend Kate Middleton. I took this route (on a bus) fairly frequently in the past. Key words: on a friggin' bus.

At every intersection, I'd mutter, okay it's definitely the next one. I'm positive. 

Forty (!) five (!) minutes later, we reached the back entrance. Kelly and I, surprisingly not even a wee bit jet-lagged, wandered around the grounds, oohing and ahhing over the pond and the fountains and that strange thing called SUNSHINE IN THE UK. A lovely afternoon, topped by another very long trek back to the hotel because we are strong independent women who don't need no taxi.

Cassandra managed to brave it for her and Kelly's sunset champagne tasting reservation aboard The London Eye, but because I had done the whole shebang merely months earlier, I instead sat along the Thames on a bench, really really still, as I soaked it all in. The changing color of the sky, magnificent Ben in front of me, the scent of McDonald's fries wafting over from its excellent location around the corner. I had this feeling, right then right there, that this moment marked the beginning of what would be an unforgettable summer.

//end cheesefest.

and then we had to walk to the Underground, which we couldn't find for thirty minutes, and a sick and sad Cassandra (who had to sit down every three minutes of walking or so for an inhaler puff / to cough out her lungs) got really frustrated.
and then it seemed like every restaurant was closed back in our 'hood. Finally, we came upon one that although it clearly said that it was closing, had a staff nice enough to stay open for us – amazing Italian food in Holland Park, I'll give the name when I remember!
and then for the next post I swear I'll be more concise. Pinkies.

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Where I've Been, Where I'm Now, and What's Ahead

Caroline, you had ONE job. ONE. Document Europe. You spectacular failure. Good going, loser. However, if there ever was a time to completely drop off the face of the Internet planet, I'm glad it was during the summer, more commonly known to bloggers as "hiatus-bernation" season when we all abandon our posts in front of the bright glare of the computer screen in favor of pools and boats and BBQs and in my case, about seven countries in Europe.
I have a heck of a lot of stories to share with you. So many misadventures, beautiful moments, tough lessons learned, and funny anecdotes that I want written down for posterity's sake, as well. And I can't wait to get started.
But, briefly:

Where I've Been:

+ London (plus a short visit to my old stomping grounds, Oxford), Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Capri, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Greece, and quite the number of airports, and bus and train stations in between. Wow. Written out, it seems a bit much and the task of recapping it all appears to be quite daunting. Never fear, I say. I... won't, you reply.
+ Being completely in denial about, and therefore kicking and screaming my way through, college graduation.
+ Holing up in Southern California for a week with my (former) roommate's fam.
+ Couchsurfing and having the BEST peek of post-grad life back on campus (seems rather contradictory, but I shall explain) and in San Francisco as I hunted for a not-so-temporary place to live. THE BEST PEEK. 

Where I'm Now:

+ Home in Houston, and you can see the sweat puddles as evidence, if you really really want.
+ Desperately binge-watching the entirety of Parenthood. 
+ Whittling my Bloglovin' feed down from 800+ unread posts to a grand number of zero. (Check, as of last night. I really need to get a life.)

What's Ahead:

+ Bridal showers and bridesmaid dress finalizing and minion-to-the-bride-ing and eventually watching my sister get hitched in October!
+ A big girl job and a big girl apartment in San Francisco, and all of the trials and errors that come as a package deal.
+ Giving in to all the blogtalk that urges "finding a niche" etcetera etcetera despite the fact that the little voice in my head keeps on whispering, this is gonna be a lot of work. What's going to be your speciality anyway? Brunch? EVERYONE SPECIALIZES IN BRUNCH. I'll slowly but surely tweak this space into one for the "new girl in the real world," just. you. wait. 
+ In the meantime, brace yourselves for the post-tornado coming up as I switch between Europe, graduation, apartment-hunting, San Francisco, scary thoughts, funny thoughts, and um, whatever the heck this thing called adulting could be.
I'm so happy to be back. I've missed you all like I currently miss those Italian carbs.
What've you been up to? Do tell.

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