'Ello

MONDAY
Back to the books. I can’t tell you how hard it is to study when you can easily put on your coat (and scarf and gloves and earmuffs-it’s cold) and go outside and be in London. I have this thing where I adjust very quickly to my environment. So besides a few days of jet lag, it doesn’t feel like I’m a foreigner as much as I thought I would.

Did I mention that I love it here?

So Monday was a school day, but also a Tesco run day to get detergent and see if the rumors are true that all of the hot guys go to Tesco (so far, not so true…). Before classes we ran in Hyde Park, again, in the bitter cold. Whether it’s cold or hot, Hyde Park is hoppin’ with people and their dogs. Annie and I did our laundry and definitely had a laundry room dance party. What else would we do? Everyone in the Shakespeare class went to the Globe (not free for those not in the class…BOOO!!), so the downstairs was basically all to us.
More homework. Then Annie and I were adventurous and tried to get tickets to see John Mayer (why didn’t we know about him coming before the weekend before?). We stood outside for a solid hour waiting for the scalper’s prices to continue decreasing. I gotta say, I was proud of our patience, and they were NOT haha. After everyone went in, we figured we could either wait another hour to maybe have prices get down low enough for us to buy OR we could get out of the cold and go get some gelato. I got the cookies and cream flavor. Mmmm.
More homework. I talk about it a lot because there’s lots of it. I’m not complaining too much, though, because the homework makes us learn more while we’re here. The cool thing about what we learn about is that we actually go out to the places we learn about in class.
TUESDAY
Classes went really well today. We learned about the Bassae temple in Greece and the friezes (marble panels lining the top of the walls of the temple). I was really excited because we were actually going to see them at the British Museum. The Britons took them out of Greece ages ago to put them in the UK and ever since the Greeks have begged for them back. Will they get them back? Unfortunately, no. We started taking the tube to the museum, but there were issues or something so we waited for a bus, which took forever to make its way through the city. A few of us got separated from the big group, so we just got off where we were supposed to and got a bit lost walking to the museum. When we finally found the museum, the group was just getting out of the Bassae room. I was SO disappointed. I’m way interested in this stuff because of the way that Classics influences architecture and interior design. I hope I get to see it sometime before I leave. The up side was that the British Museum is one of the coolest places I’ve ever been to, hands down. You know those things that you read about in your history text books? Yeah, they’re here. For example, we took at look at the friezes from the Parthenon temple from Greece. Apparently, the Turks stored their ammunition in the Parthenon during a war and something made it all explode, blowing the ends of the temple into smithereens. What we saw of it was really cool, though. The Parthenon was dedicated to the Greek goddess of war, Athena. Legend is that she was born out of the head of Zeus or someone and she was already fully clothed and grown-up, ready for action. The pediment from the front of the temple was in pieces from the explosion so they don’t have the full depiction of this. The frieze contain a scene of humans riding their horses quickly from one entrance towards the gods lounging on the north side of the temple. I’m not sure what this means, but it’s neat. Another example of how cool this place is that I saw THE Rosetta Stone. THE Rosetta Stone.

On the way home, I was getting on the tube behind my group and the doors started to close on me, so I had to quickly hop off back onto the platform. Abandoned again. Having this happen on top of missing the Bassae room and getting lost and little sleep the night before made me not very happy.
Earlier that day I was craving hamburgers and pizza both so I was hoping for one of them for dinner. We got hamburgers, so that made me feel a bit better.
WEDNESDAY
Today made up for yesterday. We traveled outside of London for the first time. Destinations: Stonehenge, Salisbury, and Bath.
I can die happy now that I’ve seen the British Museum and Stonehenge. Ok, maybe not, I still have to see Platform 9 ¾. Never mind. But really Stonehenge was cool despite the snow pelting us in the face. We got lots of fun pictures and I can now say that I’ve seen it!

.:Anna, Arrin, Annie, Laura, Brittany, Kira, Me:.
We loaded back onto the bus to travel to Salisbury, where the Cathedral of St. Mary is located. Another beautiful church. The spire extending out of the top is over 400 feet, the tallest in Britain.

.:St. Mary's/Salisbury Cathedral:.

.:inside the Cathedral:.
The main attraction of the Cathedral was the best preserved copy of the Magna Carta. Sorry, picture weren't allowed, but I really saw it.
We were then ushered off to Bath, a cute city out in the country. It’s called Bath because of the Roman Baths discovered there. While we toured these, I was taken aback about the fact that I was walking in an area that used to be inhabited by Romans. The baths were found by ancient people lots of years ago and they considered them to be sacred waters. When the Romans invaded, they also felt this special vibe from the springs so they built their temple by it and created it into a place where people could relax and rejuvenate. The temple is still not fully excavated, but we saw the altar where they held sacrifices to the goddess of comfort/rejuvenation, Minerva. They have her head from the original statue on display.

Right next to the baths was the Abbey of Bath, yet ANOTHER beautiful church.
We walked up the street to the assembly hall, where people would assemble to party, basically. Bath was the place to be if you wanted to socialize in the olden days. Even Jane Austen went to the halls we were in.
Oh, and we saw Nicholas Cage’s house.

Since we got home late, they gave us money to go get food, so me and a few friends went to eat at a Thai Buffet. I stink like oriental restaurants (you know what they smell is) but the food was good.
London has been good to me.