London

In keeping with my recent habit of not staying in the same location for more than 3.2 seconds, I flew to London last Thursday morning to visit my brother. Conveniently, my roommate from college and one of my best friends in the whole world, Liberty, also lives in London, as does one of my oldest friends, Kaelan, whom I've known since the sixth grade. It was a weekend full of some of the best company I can imagine!

Will had to study for finals most of the weekend, but he managed to find time to show us around Borough Market. Borough is the most incredible food market I've ever seen. And I have seen a lot of food markets in my day. There's no way to try everything (though Liberty and I made a good effort!) so luckily Will could point out the best that the local vendors had to offer. And the winner (in all of our opinions) was the chorizo burger.

Yum.

I've been to London before, so I was able to use the few days I had there to spend time with friends, instead of feeling rushed to see everything. I did go back to the British Museum, which has an amazing exhibit right now on "Living and Dying Around the World." It sounds a little morbid, but it was fascinating! I learned about so many things I had never even considered, like the types of complicated burial rituals in Ghana and the traditional method of trading on the Solomon Islands. I could spend months wandering around the British Museum and never get bored.

A few other highlights of the weekend were having dinner on Brick Lane (known for Indian food . . . score) and taking a trip to Queen Mary's Forest with Liberty for a little fresh air and exercise on Sunday morning. It was a great trip, and I'm so glad to have friends like Kaelan and Liberty, not to mention an awesome brother who brings antibiotics for his sister all the way from the States and takes time out from studying to have high tea with her!

I jumped right back into life in Germany, which was confusing after having reacquainted myself with the English language for a few days. I am also still suffering from mild panic attacks when I have to figure out which way to look when I cross the street.

My re-immersion into Germany was made easier by the fact that right now is the spring (and Swabian) version of Oktoberfest in Stuttgart. So I did what any girl looking for an authentic German experience would do . . . I suited up and headed to the Wasen! My German friends (in Lederhosen, pictured below) plus a new Chinese friend were pretty impressed by my pseudo-German look.

Also, beer tents are indeed real.

Now, onto my next subject. Mother's Day. I blame my excursion to London for this shout-out post being three days late, but better late than never, right? Maybe my mom thought she was getting off easy after I embarrassed my dad on his birthday in the last post, or maybe she felt left out. I don't know. Either way, I'd like to take a few moments to talk about my mom.

Shwew! Can you believe how beautiful she is?! As I was going through my iPhoto library, trying to choose which pictures to include in this post, I kept thinking that over and over again.

This beautiful woman has taught me pretty much every important thing I will ever need to know about life, love, and family. We've been best friends since I was old enough to realize how ridiculously cool she is (at approximately age two). Also, she is a culinary goddess. Seriously. There's nowhere in the world I would rather eat than at her table. You think I'm kidding.

She challenges me to be my best every day, and encourages me to try new things. Here's me after trying one of those new things that I really didn't want to do, hot yoga. Turns out that I love it!

She even loves me when my hair looks like "seaweed" (her words, not mine). As we've grown up, she's been strict when she needed to be, but also knew when it was okay to just look away when we weren't being too bad.

A prime example of this would be the McAllister children playing late-night poker in our hotel room in Wyoming last summer. We were betting with rock candy, and only Will drank the beer. Mom's in the background with the covers over her face.

My mom and I have also done some cool things together, like digging for dinosaur bones in Montana . . .

. . . and exploring Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

I'd also like to wish a (slightly belated) Happy Mother's Day to my grandmothers, Nana and Oma. They are amazing women that I look up to, and I'm looking forward to seeing both of them soon! Oma will be coming to Germany in a few weeks and helping me with my project here in Tübingen. And the first thing I do when I get home in July will be to unpack, repack, and jet off to Alaska with Nana and the rest of the Joplin crew for a family vacation!

Life is good.