Oh my gosh, it's been so long!!!

Hello friends!

It has been so long since we've talked, I am so sorry for neglecting you!! So much has happened since my last update, it's been like, over a week!!! Wow. Well I'm gonna try and fill you in on most things as best as I can.

Last week started off pretty rainy, so Monday we made it a short day in the city. We started off in a nearby coffee shop, where our teacher bought us all coffee to start out the cold rainy day with. Our focus for the day was looking at different means of transport in London, so we walked to Little Venice to see a long standing canal, we saw the only highway that comes into the city, and we spent some time in Paddington Station, talking about the Great Western Railway and the architecture of the building, which is truly beautiful. Afterwards, a few of us Harry Potter fans took the Tube to the Kings Cross station and saw Platform 9 and 3/4. While this is mostly a tourist attraction, it is the station talked about in the movie and book, and it was a lot of fun.

Tuesday we went to Bloomsbury Square, where we rented a classroom for three hours and the teachers rapidly try and sum up everything we've been learning out in the city during the day. Kelsie, one of my flatmates, got left behind in the Tube station and Sean (my art teacher) had to run back and search for her. It was scary, but all was well. It's really easy to lose the group in the stations. They're so busy and crowded, especially in the early morning. After the classroom we broke for lunch and then walked to the American Intercontinental University. There we met with students and faculty of the art department and how to go about getting a British Fine Arts degree. We got to see some of their animation and documentary pieces, along with their photography. The photography department was INCREDIBLE. The two students we met have been commissioned for jobs like Diesel Ads, and are just now graduating. They don't have a graduate degree (bummer) but most of the students housed there have gotten a Bachelors of Fine Arts in America, and instead of going onto grad school, have come over here and gotten a British Bachelors of Arts. The focus is so different, along with the education, it's like getting a grad degree....possibly an option for me in the future.

Tuesday night has been one of my favorites so far. We got dressed up and went to Shakespeare's Globe Theater to see A Midsummer Nights Dream. I have never laughed so hard in my life. The whole experience of seeing Shakespeare performed in the reconstructed Globe was magical, and so much better than simply reading the text. I accidentally stuck my hand in green pigeon poop, which was just fantastic (sike). But I'm assuming people got pigeon poop a lot on them in the old days considering there is no roof on the theatre. I'm thinking about going back to see King Lear before I leave if I can find the time.

Wednesday we went to the Canary Wharf tube station, which is a sight in itself, and the Docklands, which is where many of the ports used to be when London was a trade city. We then ventured out to Greenwich, which is beautiful. We saw the Queen's House, the Painted Room, the Maritime Museum, and the Royal Observatory. For those of you who don't know, Greenwich is where time starts, quite literally. All of the clocks are based off of Greenwich time, because that is where the point where, back in the day, they agreed the Prime Meridian began. So not only did I get to see a beautiful view of the city of London from the top of the Royal Observatory hill, but I also got to stradle the Prime Meridian, which is pretty cool. From Greenwich we took a ferry down the the Thames to Westminster, which was really cool.

Wednesday night we had a fun time in our apartment. Hillary's implant cap has been loose since we arrived here. While we were all working on our homework, I looked over at Hillary who was just smiling at me, toothless. Her cap had fallen off, which was hysterical, even to her! The next day she had to break off from us to get it cemented back on, which was a feat in itself to get dental help overseas. Even so, it was really funny.

Thursday we started out the day with a long walk through Hyde Park. We saw where the revolutionary building, The Crystal Palace once stood. We also got the pleasure of seeing the mounted calvary Police of London emerge from the gates of their building in formation and uniform. We moved on down the trail to the Albert Memorial, which is one of the largest, most ornately decorated memorials I've ever seen. It's full of symbolism and important figures throughout history that is really neat to hear about. We crossed the street and walked to an area called Brompton, where we saw the Brompton Oratory. It is one of the only churches in London modeled after the Jesuit cathedrals in Rome, so people in history who couldn't afford to travel to Rome to see the cathedrals could get a taste of what they were like. It was incredible, and I plan to go back and spend some time in there. Then we walked to the Victoria and Albert museum, which I could spend a year in. It is huge, and resembles an attic. There is SO much to see there, and the way things are displayed is really unique. A highlight for me was seeing Edward Muybridge's photographic horse sequence, which revolutionized photography, motion pictures, and animation. Very cool.

Friday was another short day. We traveled to Victoria station, and then we walked to the Tate Britain, which is possibly my favorite museum so far. So many paintings I have learned about in my art history courses are there, and it was almost spiritual seeing them in person. We didn't get to spend much time there, but that is just another place we plan to go back to on our own.

Friday night we felt the need to get out of our flats. Drinking on public transportation here is legal, or was until June 1st. So we went to the store and bought some 2 liters of Strongbow (my new favorite drink), and just rode the Tube for a while celebrating the fact that the week was over, we're in London, and that drinking on public transportation would be illegal in a couple days. We got off at Covent Garden and went to a pretty boring bar. After that we waited another hour for the danm 23 bus (the night bus that takes us back to our neck of the woods since the Tube closes at 12:30am) and passed out!

Saturday was busy. Hill and I woke up relatively early and went museum hopping. We went to the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Photographer's Gallery, and back to the Victoria and Albert museum. We had a lot of research to do for some papers that were do this week, but they were actually really cool assignments. We had to go to the museums, buy a postcard of a piece of work that we liked. We then had to go and find the piece in the museum and write a paper comparing and contrasting the original piece and the postcard. Next time you go to a museum, I reccommend doing this, it is really cool to see the difference. After a long day of travelling around London, we came back to our flat and showered, then we set out for Fish and Chips with our flatmates. Our usual pub down the street was all out of Fish, so we went to about 3 different pubs who were either out of fish or stopped serving food (pub hours are weird here), so we finally circled back to the other pub down the street from us and ate there. We stayed in Satruday night, and it was pretty comparable to a night at UD. We hung out, drank some Strongbow, and danced to our Now 68 CD, since it was the only source of music we have to play thorough the DVD player.

Sunday we went down to the Duke of York (the pub) , ate a lot of fried food, drank some pints, and spent 5 hours there working on homework. It's nice to get out of our rooms into the London atmosphere when doing homework.

Yesterday we went to St. Paul's Cathedral, which is astoundingly beautiful. Then we crossed the Millenium bridge to the Tate Modern musuem, which is unique, but pretty cool. We then hiked down the Thames to City Hall for a bit to get out of yet another rainy day. We crossed Tower Bridge to the Tower of London where we didn't have time to go in. Our history teacher, Dr. Hume, gave us a brief overview of the history of the Tower, and plans to take whoever would like to go back with her next week.

Today we had another classroom session and got out pretty early, which explains why I'm at the internet cafe instead of working on homework! Tonight I have to write an engineering paper, and a paper on the Globe theatre. Tomorrow we are meeting at 7am (eww) and taking a bus to Avebury, Stonehenge, and Sailsbury. I am really exicted for that!

This weekend we have Friday off, so most of us are scattering to different countries for the weekend. Hillary and I, and a couple others from our group are taking a train to Skye Isle in Scotland. It is supposed to be a beautiful mix of a quiet town and Scotland's landscape. It's going to be a reallllly long train ride for just a weekend, but I think it will definitely worth it, and we can get some homework done on the way.

Sorry that was so long, if you even made it all the way through, which I highly doubt many of you did!! I have to go to Kings Cross to get my train ticket for Scotland, then back to the flat to work on homework =(

I hope all is well at home! I haven't heard from many of you about your summers, so please fill me in!!

I miss you and love you <3

Talk to you soon.