School=Buzzkill

October 29

I'm so tired of doing school. I just want to go have adventures in London! Oh I hate being an adult and being all responsible and shiz. But whatever. On Monday I didn't do a whole lot because we have a midterm on Thursday (my birthday, mind you) and I've been getting stuff done for class. My day started, though, at a very unfortunate time: 6 AM. I had to sign up for my classes for winter semester and since 6 AM my time is midnight Utah time I had to drag my lifeless body out of bed and sign up for classes that I don't even want to be taking in the first place. But that's over now and I've committed myself to 3 months of a whole lot of writing and statistics problems. After I finished that and finished with class we went on a walk for our London Walks class through South Kensington, also known as Albertopolis, because of all the museums and colleges that are all around that area. It was an interesting walk, we saw the Holy Trinity Church, the Brompton Oratory Church, Royal Albert Hall, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. I loved going into the Victoria and Albert Museum. I haven't gone to one in a while, so I was better able to appreciate it and have a good time looking at all of the art and the exhibits. We also bought tickets to go into the special ball gown exhibit and see some beautiful dresses that famous people have worn. It was cool, but not worth 7 pounds. Just for future reference.

October 30

Things I did:

- Went to Regent Street
- Went to Oxford Street
- Went to Covent Gardens
- Saw some crazy jugglers
- Saw some 16 year olds rolling cigarettes on the tube

Good deed for the day: I found a homeless man sitting on Regent Street and he had a sign that wasn't asking for money, it just said, "I'm very hungry" so I gave him the other half of my bueno bar that I hadn't eaten yet.

October 31

Halloween! Halloween isn't as big of a deal here, which is a bummer but we still had a good time. We started out our All Hallows Eve by going to the Greenwich Market, which is known for going all out for Halloween. It did not disappoint. It was a smaller market, but all of the people who were running the booths were dressed up and helping to run the little show they had going on for the kids. It was so much fun! I even got myself this chicken bowl from a sketchy little Chinese booth. It was so good... Super scary, though. They were pulling meat out from underneath tables so that wasn't too comforting. But it tasted so good, I could ignore it and I could ignore the little bones I was pulling out of my mouth as I ate it.

 After the market we continued on with our festivities and went to this really cool cemetery in Greenwich and walked around. That cemetery was so cool! It's super old so all of the graves were tilted in every which direction and they just kind of leave the graves alone so there's vines growing all over everywhere and the trees are huge. It made it kind of eerie, which as you can imagine, is perfect for Halloween. We even saw Karl Marx's grave. It was interesting... He had his giant head placed on a big monument to his name. Scary as well. Then for dinner we decided to dress up so about 15 of us got together and dressed up as denim. Yes, denim. I wore jeans, a denim button up, and my jean jacket with a very attractive hair bow acting as a bow tie. And to top off the irresistible attractiveness, our hair was in pigtails like a 5 year old child. It was a lot of fun, though :) it was a good Halloween abroad. Even if I had to spend the rest of it studying for an English midterm.

November 1st

Happy birthday to me! Want to know what I did to start out my twentieth birthday? I took a midterm. It was quite a good start... Ha yeah good one. But then Lily and Alex were sweethearts and went to Starbucks and got me a strawberries and cream frappucino and some shortbread cookies for breakfast. Two of my favorite things :) it made it a lot better. After class we went to High Street Kensington and looked for a big down coat for Scotland. But then that was cut short because we had to go to religion class at 2.

After our second block of class we went over to Oxford street and went back on the search for a solid coat that won't make me freeze to death. Unfortunately, I found one. And down coats are EXPENSIVE. I found a coat that I fell in love with at Nike and practically cried as I forked over the dough for it. But I'm happy I got it. It's so ridiculously warm and I've worn it every day since. Goodbye Cassie's money, it's been nice knowing you. Then after that we went to Tinseltown by our house and got some shakes to end my happy birthday.

It was kind of sad being away for my birthday. I missed my family a lot and just being home for it. I was missing going out to dinner with everyone. That was one of the first times I was really homesick. I don't have a lot of time here to be homesick since we have so much going on all the time, but I really do miss my family. But I'm in London, so I can't be too sad :)

November 2

Thank the heavens for my down coat. Friday we went up to Dover and Canterbury and it was so incredibly cold... It made me super excited for our trip 5 hours north of that. But we started out with Dover and seeing the castle and the underground tunnels that they used in WWII. They were very decked out... They had put the tunnels back to how they would have been in the 30's with all of the communication and bunkers put back together. The castle was also really cool, too, because they had put furniture in it and made it look like it did when people lived in it, just like the tunnels. They also had fires going, which I definitely appreciated.








After Dover we made another trek up to Canterbury. That town was so cute! It looked like it was straight out of a fairytale with the old English buildings and the gardens. The cathedral was so cool, too! I like the times when we have guides to take us through the cathedrals, though. We had this cute old man take us through and just tell us some of the history behind it and the story about Thomas Gainsborough who was killed there. I love those little English towns so much :)



November 3

We literally went for 16 hours straight just going, going, going. We started by getting up at 6:30 to go to the Harrod's Christmas Parade. It's just the beginning of November, but I guess since they don't like Thanksgiving here, they just have 2 solid months of Christmas. It was kind of a strange cacophony of Disney characters, jugglers, clowns, and horses, but then Santa came out (Father Christmas to the Brits) and it was a little more Christmassy. Once we finished ogling at the parade, we went to 3 different museums for our classes. We started out with the National Portrait Gallery, then the National Gallery, and to top it off, the Tate Britain.

Our next fun activity that the program set up for us was a football match out in the boonies of London. The English like their soccer... There was this crazy drunk guy a few rows behind us yelling at the teams and taking off shirt every time a goal was made, so that was interesting. Our seats were so close it was weird. We were about 8 rows back, so you could easily see the players. The game was between Fulham and Everton, two teams I obviously didn't know, but they seemed to kick the ball pretty well... I don't know. Apparently it was a big deal because the goalie of the US National team, something Howard, was the goalie for the Everton team. Let's just say that a group of 35 girls was a little out of place there.

After our game finished we were ravenous so we went to this place called Tortilla and got some fantastic Mexican food and made a friend in the tube station. He was a worker and he wrote a book so he told us to read it. Interesting. For those who don't know, it is Guy Fox Weekend. This is a holiday celebrating the fact that a man named Guy Fox, who was planning on blowing up parliament was caught and consequently hung till he was almost dead, dragged through the street behind a horse, and then quartered. Bloodthirsty Brits. But yes, they celebrate this event every year by having fireworks all around the country so we went to Blackhearst and watched a big fireworks show. It was such a fun little place, they even had this little carnival going on with food booths, rides, and haunted houses. I love days where we go all day long.