FOURTH!

Hey, dudes. This will likely turn out to be a mainly text-only post...sorry! I'm working on a collection of photoz for you though. Day-to-day sights and product differences, mainly. Should be fun, I swear!

I just dropped about £90 on books on Amazon.com and I still have to buy some more from the bookstore. This is after taking out about £200 from my account over the weekend, thinking the bookstore at school would be cheap and not rip me off so I could use those withdrawn funds on books. Boo. I

(UK Dr. Pepper tastes bizarre. For the record!)

I'm in the common room watching weird British music videos and sitting next to a guy eating an enormous chocolate eclair.

This is dumb. I'm done. haha. PEACE.

THIRD!

Inside the British Museum, where I went with my History of London class this afternoon.

Once inside the Great Hall. (Very HP sounding, no?)
Right around this time I made some stupid comment that I'm still embarrassed to have made, even four hours later. The museum has an exhibit going on right now of a Chinese terracotta army that was discovered semi-recently, and my Doctor mentioned that that building you see in that picture was filled with "Chinese warriors." So? So, I thought he said "Chinese lawyers" and, thinking it was a group of Chinese diplomats working out issues--I don't know why I thought they'd be handling business in the middle of the British museum--then proceeded to ask what they were doing in there. *face palm.*










Show me the money!


Close-up on those monies. Ooh la la!




One more! I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.


Curse Scrolls.


(If you click on this, you can read a little bit more about the Curse Scrolls. I found it amusing, to say the least.)


Bust of Emperor Nero.


The Rosetta Stone! I can't believe I was actually that close. Things are so accessible, not to mention nearly tangible. I could certainly get used to this!

Bits and pieces of the Parthenon.





Some Coptic writings.

That would be what the headdress originally looked like...

And this is how it was found. On a crushed human skull. Fancy!

SECOND!

The past few days' adventures:

The day before yesterday (so, the 19th?) I went to Spitafields Market, which had a lot of Bangladeshi restaurants nearby and I'm told when it's open is very "quirky, historic, modern, tatty and smart", but unfortunately our brilliant RA's chose to take us on a day when the market was closed. haha. Oh well, at least I know where it is now! We went to a restaurant called Giraffe, and "Love, Eat, Live" is their slogan. A few of us seemed to live by that (hai, fattiez!) so we took a picture for fun.

(I had minestrone soup and grilled toast, in case you were wondering, and it was deeeee-lish.)

The next day, we went to a boat party on the Thames. A lot of drinking went down (not I, said the hen, for I have no money!), but I managed to meet some very nice people and miraculously avoided being dry humped by over-zealous study abroaders. : ) This was taken from the window, and is the eye of London. An enormous Ferris wheel with glass compartments for sitting in. I think it's under repair right now, but I know their permit (which was only good for 5 years I think?) is up. Only time will tell if the Eye stays standing.

Here's a few more from that night:



(This one was taken under London Bridge. Luckily it didn't fall down on us. Har, har.

It's fairly non-descript, actually. I was expecting something more grandiose, for some reason, but it's just a bridge really. It's pretty at night, though. They put red lights on it...obviously.

There were some people walking over when we passed under, and they waved at us and said cheerio. Cute.)



That is Tower Bridge, aptly named because it is located next to the Tower of London.





































It looks like a castle, doesn't it? It was painted blue to please the Queen (or future Queen? I forget what our tour guide said...) at the time (who's name Wikipedia won't specify) of opening, because her favorite color was blue.

I didn't take many pictures on my Kensington Gardens excursion yesterday, mainly because I didn't feel like looking like a tourist and whipping out my camera every five seconds. However, it's lovely. And expansive. I was glad a bought a croissant before I left, or I would've been starving! (There was a whole issue with coinage, the first incident I've had with not being able to count. Durr. It was embarrassing AND it was a French pastry shop, so the girl asked me if I wanted it for takeaway in French and I had no idea what she was saying. Suffice it to say that I was beet red by the time I left the shop!)

I spent about two hours walking around the gardens and walking back--though part of that can be attributed to the fact that I got a bit lost downtown walking back. ha. I just kept going until I hit a main road, though, and then I was set.

It's really neat. Inside there are a few memorials, an Italian fountain (where I stopped to write a letter for a while!), rose gardens (obviously not flowering right now), sports fields, groves of trees, running and cycling trails, and an enormous duck pond. I swear, there had to be at least 200 ducks, Canadian and snowy geese there, and people feeding them! It was also sweet to see moms and dads pushing their kids in strollers to feed the ducks. On Sundays, artists gather outside the gardens and hang their works on the rails, so I passed a few blocks of "art galleries" on my way home.

Because I'm a huge loser, I get a real kick out of this "Fresh paint" sign on the Ambassadors door. I also did not feel like a huge creep taking a picture of it.

Heading out to send a few postcards now. If you're lucky, you might be receiving one!

FIRST!

Hello, children! I'm feeling fairly benevolent and patient this lovely London afternoon and have chosen to bestow upon you this very first Eurotopia post! Yes! The reason it's taken so long is because pictures, for some reason, are a real pain in the butt to load.

My flight, you ask? It wasn't too bad, although I didn't sleep much.
It took about a half hour for me to get my bags checked, and all the while I was fighting a nervous breakdown. ha. It's funny now, I swear. Check out my face, dudes:
Pretty funny, huh? I finally get through, and Matt sends me (I was rather unhappy about it, I must say) through to security, which was quick although they made me take off my sweater. I know. Weird. I get to my gate and the flight is delayed about 40 minutes, so I get one last coffee and a scone for the plane before placing a million calls to my family and then staying on with Matt until I left. I'm all weepy and stupid in my chair, especially when I had to turn off my phone. Hi-larious.

I sat next to a 19-year old girl who was interning at the American Embassy and went to Boston University. She was nervous because she didn't have a Visa, which isn't a problem if you're a student like me, but since she's interning and being paid USD she was afraid she'd be deported. ha. She probably was. Anyway, I watched a couple in-flight movies ("Ratatouille" and "Into the Wild", which I strongly recommend!) and tried to sleep uncomfortably. No go.

We land and meet some AIFS reps at the gate, who then lead us to a bus into which we load our things before departing on the 45-minute drive from Heathrow to Kensington-Chelsea, where my dorm is located. I find out my room assignment in Ambassador House, and head there. I am surprised to find out that I am not, in fact, in an urban area of London, but rather in a royal borough and in a rather posh neighborhood. Case in point:
Yes. I live THERE. Doesn't it look French?

Who's door is that I'm knocking on, you ask?
Why, that would be my good friend Ambassador. As in the Ambassador to France.

Yes. My dorm is in such a filthy rich neighborhood that I am surrounded by Ambassadors. Unbelievable.

Anyway, the walk to the cafeteria, library, computer lab, etc. is less than 10 minutes away, and most of my other classes are about the same walk, just in the other direction.

We've been going on a lot of orientation-type activity trips since we arrived. I've gone on a bus tour of London, where I saw Buckingham Palace, Fleet Street, the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, traveled to Spitafield Market, gone on a boat party, and to various pubs around the area. Tonight I'm going to a King Tut exhibit, which I am really looking forward to.

I've been meeting lots of very kind people, but friends just don't fall into your lap, so I'm struggling a bit with that and the fact that I can't just text people at any hour of the day. Also, the conversion rates of USD into pounds nearly make my head spin, but I'm trying not to think about that too much when it comes to doing things like going to museums.

A lot of people have been going out every night and dropping insane amounts of money. I wish I could do that, but I'd much rather go on trips to different countries than blow it all on beer and not take full advantage of my trip. I feel like some people around me don't necessarily understand that at this point in time, but I'm hoping eventually they will.

Anyway, I'm missing you all very much. Sorry for the extremely dry first post, but hopefully I'll have more to offer you soon when I start going on some real adventures. I went to Kensington Gardens by myself this morning, but my roommates are sort of hung over and I don't want to disturb them. haha. Thinking of all of you, and hope you are well! Love!

PS: If you still want a pen-pal, I have a fresh pack of envelopes with your name on them. All I need is your address and you'll have a brand new trans-continental writing relationship for the low, low price of an international stamp!