ok guys, this is probably my last post on my oxford travels. we leave in a little more than twenty four hours for the airport to get on a plane that will take us home to america! its so sad and yet so exciting. one minute im laughing and the next im crying. its crazy!! but its mostly been laughing : ) so lets see what have i done in the past week? well saturday night we went out to celebrate my birthday!! it was me sarah lisa bethann and kelly. it was SO much fun!! first we went to angels and i had a margarita and an amaretto sour. then we met a bunch of the group outside g&d's and talked to them for a little bit. then we went to the turf tavern where i had a smirnoff ice AND a bacardi breezer. the most ive ever had at one time is two... so yeah then we went back to the house and hung out. it was fun. then i crashed in my bed, clothes, contacts and all.... then sunday sarah and i went out and shopped and i took pictures for my photo essay. we were gone for four hours! then we went to our last nine at nine. it was great! we got to write little encouraging notes for eveyone on sheep!!! it was so cute!! except that dr morgan wasnt paying attention to the directions and wrote on the entire front side of my sheep so there was no room for anyone to write anything! lol but they wrote around it and through it and on the back side. lets see.. basically everyone likes my laugh and my smile lol. so then after that we took communion and the professors prayed over us individually. i got the morgans and janine prayed which totally made me bawl! shes so sweet!!! plus i knew it was our last worship in house nine!! sadness! then we sang and prayed together. of course i couldnt help but laugh a few times, its what i do!! lol then monday we had to be pretty much packed up so thats what i did mostly. then we all went to the trout for dinner. it was so good! and then kristin jordan and i celebrated our birthdays during dessert! everyone sang to us and we had sparkler candles : ) then after that we came back to the house and had a talent show-it was pretty funny! and then a bunch of us played what if. that game is hilarious!!! more good laughs! and then i packed some more and now here i am at 4 in the morning blogging. tomorrow sarah and i are going fo the last time to help jules cook and then we are eating at eagle and child for the last time and then i think some of us are going to some pub called porters. so yeah.... thats it everybody! this semester has been amazing and i cant imagine where i would be right now if i hadnt come on this trip. i have grown so much and i love that!! God is so wonderful! im going to miss this house and these people and leaving the country every few weeks and hearing british accents every day and seeing the pound sign and eating some good food thats only over here and cooking with jules and boyd and having nine at nine and laughing so hard in the computer lab and going to g&d's and so so so so many other things!!!!! but i sure am looking forward to so many things at home!! love you all!!! cant wait to hug your necks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ~jen

ok so im finally blogging about our italy trip! i hope i can remember everything!! here we go... saturday night we left the house at 1am, thats right, no sleep! and took a bus from here to stansted airport. we got there about 4:30am. our plane took off at 6:30 and we landed in venice at 9am. we took a bus into the city and then a water bus(which is a "subway" on the canal) to our bed and breakfast!!! it was SO wonderful!! it was only 25 dollars a night and the lady was so nice and our room was AMAZING!!! we had two bedrooms and our own bathroom for the four of us, oh it was me sarah denyce and lisa. anyways and we shared a kitchen with some other people. so we went out for a little while to get some lunch. we ended up eating pizza(go figure!) and drinking coke on some steps by the grand canal. it was SO beautiful!!! then we walked around the shops that were close by and i did well-i didnt buy ANYTHING!!! we also ate some gelato, i was actually disappointed. g&d's is so much better! so then we went back to our room and took a three hour nap! it was much needed!!! so then sarah woke us up(she is always the bearer of bad news!) and we went back out. it was really dark already and we walked around a lot more. we went to saint marks square which was totally deserted and then we walked along the canal. we ate at this little sandwich shop on the way adn then ended up at this random church and stayed there for awhile. some people were making a pilgrimage there because it was jesus christ day or something so they "security guards" and ropes up and candles. it was interesting. then we left there and headed back to our room. sarah and lisa ended up going to a vivaldi concert and denyce and i stopped by a store and got some things for later. i read my shopaholic book and then we had a party when sarah and lisa got back : ) it was a great first day in venice!!! then the next morning we got up kinda late and walked to the train station to buy our tickets to florence we ate pizza again and all three of them had gelato. the gelato guy was SO hot!!! but anyways we went on a gondola ride and it was so much fun! our gondola man was really nice. we passed alot of other gondolas and all the gondola guys know each other and say hi to one another and he told us that they all commented on the "beautiful girls" in his boat. it was SO funny! one guy actually told him in italian that he hated the fact that he had a bunch of old japanese people in his boat. lol after that we shopped a little and then went back to saint marks square to see it at day time. there were pigeons EVERYWHERE!!! we went into saint marks basilica which was cool, the whole ceiling is done in mosaics and most of it is gold mosaic!! way cool! so then after that we walked around a bit down by the water and saw some cool things like the sun kinda setting and the bridge of sighs and some pretty paintings(that were way over priced!). then after that we stopped into three churches which was rather dull but we didnt have much else to do. then we headed back to the hostel around 5:30. lisa and i ate peanut butter sandwiches! lol its SO good!!! anyways then i got to call home because the people at our bed and breakfast were SO nice!! so i talked on the phone for a few minutes and then we went back upstairs. sarah made us all look up different rome and florence and what we could do there. we had a good time with baileys and a lot of laughing! the next morning we packed up, left our luggage at the hostel, and went shopping! i bought a real italian leather purse and a necklace : ) i really limited myself, shockingly!!! lol then we grabbed some lunch, got our luggage from the bed and breakfast and went to the train station. we waited about an hour and then rode the train to florence for about three hours. we were in a room with six seats all by ourselves the whole way. BUT there were two australians in the room next to us and one of them was SO SO SO hot!!!!!!!!! so we ended up talking to him for a bit when we got on the train and then we asked him a few questions just for the heck of it... well because he was hot! but they were both really nice. so then we got to florence and went ahead and bought our tickets to pisa and rome while we were at the station. then we went to where we staying, it was about twenty minutes outside the city center. we stayed at the bible school for harding. we finally were around all americans! and ones who spoke southern american!!!! it was SO great! the students are there for two years at a time! i could never do that!!!! we shared a room with a girl and her grandma, they were both really nice. we decided to eat at a pizza place for dinner-go figure. it was pretty good but definitely didnt fill me up! lol so then we stopped so sarah and lisa could get gelato and then we went back to the bible school. we went to bed at like 9pm because we were getting up really early the next morning!! so yeah we were up at 6:30am so we would not have to wait to see the david at the academia. there was nobody there the entire time we were there! but the david is so gorgeous!!!! i really didnt think it was going to be as big as it is! i would try to estimate how big it is but im a terrible estimator lol. so we saw that and a few other pieces of art... i only care for things that i recognize and even then sometimes i dont really care, but my appreciation of art has grown since being in art : ) so then after that we went to the duomo. we had to wait about ten minutes because it wasnt open yet(a sign no one gets up as early as we do!!! lol) it was so cold!!!!!! but it was worth the wait-its gorgeous and so huge!!! we were going to climb the top but you had to pay some crazy amount of euros so we decided not to do it. plus im not much for exercise : ) then we got mcdonalds for lunch and got on our train to pisa! we were so pumped!! but then... well this JERK(for lack of a nonoffensive word!) came to check our tickets which we had, but he was going to charge us 40, thats right, 40 euros EACH because we hadnt stamped them!!!!! NO ONE ever told us we had to have them stamped and we have rode on trains all over europe and never had to have them stamped!!!!!!!!!! but he kept saying that just because we were not in america anymore did not mean we could get away with not stamping our tickets. then he tells denyce that she has to pay 7.60 euros for having her feet on the seat! then when sarah told him that we didnt have cash, only cards, he said he was calling the police!!!!! can you believe that?!?!?!?!? well he dialed but never spoke to anyone and then says well i cant believe you... and kinda walked away. the train was about to stop at the pisa station so we hopped off that train as fast as we could!!! lol that guy was such a ....... JERK!!!!!!!!!! so yeah... then we took the bus out to pisa(and made sure we got our tickets stamped!!!!). we had a great time at pisa taking silly pictures : ) theres not much else to do there lol. so then we went back to florence about 2:30. we were back at our hostel around 5:30pm and didnt do much other than talk, read, eat and shower. then we got up the next morning(MY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!) at the crack of dawn again and went to the uffizi gallery, it was alright, we saw boticellis birth of venus and primavera. lisa and i are experts at hitting the "highlights" which usually end up being about one or two things in the entire musuem/gallery lol then after that brief time of awe and inspiration we got our luggage, some mcdonalds and took the train to rome. it was a four hour ride that we were told was only one and a half! lol it was fun... we saw some pretty tuscan landscapes : ) once we were in rome we found our hostel-the freestyle hostel lol. we were a little nervous but it turned out to be my favorite hostel ever!!!! : ) there were a ton of canadians and australians-they were fun! and the guy at the desk was from new york and he was pretty awesome! so after we got into our room and left our luggage we went out. we saw the colosseum all lit up at night and then we went to trevi fountain!!!! it was SO SO SO fabulous!!! i got to make a wish in trevi fountain in rome on my 20th birthday!! it was awesome!!!! on our way back to the hostel(we wanted to be there around 7:30 for free pasta and wine!!!) we saw a lot of rome things such as piazza venizia and old roman ruins. i LOVE rome!!!!!!!!! so we got back to our hostel and ate pasta and talked to other people staying there. they are all so crazy! then the next morning we got up early to go to colosseum. it was so amazing-we didnt have to wait in line at all!!!!!! so we walked around there for about two hours and then we went to palatine hill. it was kinda cool but a definite let down. so after that we ate lunch and then it was back to trevi fountain to see it during the day. its definitely more gorgeous at night! so after that we went to the pantheon and i got mcdonalds(lunch was NOT enough!!) and then we walked down the spanish steps and it started raining, so we sat inside a covered street for a little bit til it stopped raining so hard. then we got some gelato and went into piazza venizia. its really pretty too and gives you a great view of all of rome. it started raining really hard again so we went to saint peters in chains church and saw the chains that were on paul while he was in prison and that were broken by angels. we also saw michelagelos sculpture of moses with horns. then i bought a shirt that says ciao bella(good bye/hello beautiful). they are "the tourist" shirt : ) then we went back to our hostel for more free dinner!! and we hung out with the people there again. after that we went to a pub with a lot of the people from the hostel, it was so random and sounds weird but it was so much fun! lisa and i ended up talking to andrew from australia for most of the time. hes pretty funny. then we headed back to the hostel because we were getting up early(again!) to go to the vatican the next day. well we didnt end up leaving the hostel til 9:30am but we didnt have to wait to get into the vatican museum for long. so in there we saw the sistine chapel(awesome!!!!) and the school of athens. again, me and lisa are good at hitting the highlights... lol so after that we got some lunch and headed for saint peters. basically we waited two hours and ended up getting to see the pope because he was doing prayer for the first vespers of the liturgical year... yeah. so anyways after that we went back to our hostel and got our luggage and went to mcdonalds in the train station. i ordered three cheeseburgers and the lady told me that they were buy one get one free so i figured she would charge me for two adn i would get two free. no. i got SIX cheeseburgers!!! plus fries and a coke!!! and you better believe i ate ALL of it!!!! so yeah we took a bus to the rome ciampino airport and spent the night there... our flight was at 6:30am and lisas budget didnt really allow for us to pay for another hostel night. it was an experience... so yeah then we flew back to london, bus from stansted airport to oxford and then rolled our suitcases for the last time down woodstock back to house ten. so yeah..... that was italy! our last trip as study abroaders!!! gtg, gotta live up my last days here!!! ~jen

ok so i just took a twenty five minute personality quiz and this is what i got : )

SOCIAL
Synopsis
Values human relationships above all.
Motivated to help people be the best they can be.
Giving of time, resources, talent and energy.
Your score = 89

What do your results mean?

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate. -Albert Schweitzer

You seem to be motivated by social values. This means that you value being helpful, kind and agreeable. You think it important to try to find the good in everyone, and you have faith that if you dig deep enough, you will find it. You wish to eliminate or at least reduce hate and conflict in the world. You give of yourself, whether on a small scale- for instance, by spending time with a friend in need, or on a global scale, by volunteering for a human-rights organization. In helping others overcome obstacles, you hope to assist them in becoming the best they can be. You are a giving, compassionate individual. You are most likely liberal politically, and you tend to become passionately angry at signs of social injustice. It is imperative to you that you have contact with people both during your free time and at work. You really enjoy and benefit from being with other people, and as a result you seek out activities where this is possible. You put family and friends over work and other responsibilities, and, consequently, you are a trusted friend and cherished family member. In times of crisis and change, you are both a source of comfort for your family and friends, and able to be comforted by them as well.

Individuals with social values tend to be good communicators. They relate well to others, and best use these skills in the helping professions, such as doctors, teachers, nurses, social workers, counselors, and other careers with extensive contact with the community. Not all individuals with social values hold these types of positions, but if not, their values probably surface in other aspects of their lives, at home or in the community.

Individuals with social values are sometimes so focused on helping people that they have trouble with organizational tasks or finding ways to cut expenses in today's budget- conscious world. They may have conflicts with other individuals who wish to perform those unpleasant tasks- even those that are just trying to be realistic. In addition, they may take on too much and become weighed down or burned out by the injustices rampant in the world. They tend to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, and may become overwhelmed or depressed if their perceive themselves to be powerless against the world's injustices. Their faith in people may backfire if they trust the wrong person before they really know them.