crazy end of the smester

its been so insane since paris!been preparing for parents to get here, writing two major papers and catching up with my journals for internship as well as saying goodbye to some of the other interns there. so that has for the most part been my life recently that and lack of sleep.
but all of that is done now. so now we plan for the travel break i'm going with halie and jesse to austria to go on the sound of music tour its going to be epic.
recently i went to dover it is so beautiful there so much walking though and stone beaches not fun! very painful on bear feet. i have now been in the mediteranian, the adrien sea, the atlantic both sides, the gulf of mexico, and the channel. the white cliffs of dover are covered with grass and moss type things very pretty although in the spring not so nice to the sinuses.
today i went to twinings tea shop once i found it it is very small, it was fun, they even have a limited edition wedding tea (that is my i was there at the royal wedding thing) after wondering around there for a while and a lunch back at the daniel house i went to go find the library cause i couldn't wonder around outside since i need to breath. so i found the British library and i was going to get a library card just cause, but you have to have proof of residency which i didn't have at that time and that library doesn't have fiction(or is it non-fiction?) so i didn't want a library card from them anyway. there is a library close to the daniel house but i couldn't find it so halie and i might be going there tomorrow. we shall see i'm tired and its almost dinner time so until later
from london with love

ah! Parie!

this weekend we went to Paris, i forgot my notebook so you won't be getting day by day notes, sorry. we went there by the eurostar which goes under the tunnel which i would have loved to have watched out the window until we went into the tunnel, but i was in a seat backwards so to keep from getting motion sick i slept the whole way.... it was early in the morning when we started out and the train ride was only two hours so that helped but i was very sad i couldn't watch at all, on the way back i was facing forwards but it was night so i couldn't see anything. sadness
we got to paris around lunch time and had a three hour bus tour, it wasn't as bad as the Edinburgh tour we got to see the major sights and things like that which was good. after the tour we went to our hotel which had amazing beds so comfy! and our window lead out to the roof which of course for a little while i walked on cause i could :). since it was the first day and we were still rather tired, my group just walked along the Seine river and just wondered about like you should do on your first day anywhere. i got my first paris print so that if i didn't have a chance to get one again i would have it. it was a lot of fun just walking along the river looking at stuff. since we were on the content they don't have dinner until late so at our normal dinner time or just before we had crepes, which was fun. then towards their dinner time we found a little french restaurant, one of the girls in my group spoke french so she translated the menu for us and spoke to the waiter in french which was pretty cool. they have 3 course meals as the main thing, so if you look for it you can get soup (or an apittizer) main course and desert for 10 euros, which is pretty good. during that day we also walked by the green boxes which are on the banks of the river they sell a lot of touristy things but also books, tons and tons of really really old books! i was very excited at first but then when i looked at the books, they were all in french which made me sad.... it makes sense for them to be in french but they didn't even have any good english books! they had some really neat looking old books for 2 euro each!! but i couldn't get them cause i don't know french nor do i know anyone who would want one who does know french.... sad day!
on the second day we did all the things we need to do, we went first to the Louve saw the mona lisa of course and then i went to go see the paintings from Flanders since that is where my name comes from just to see since there wasn't anything else i really thought i wanted to see. i broke off from the others went to see that then headed to our meeting place which was the statue of Venus that for some reason is famous still don't know why cause i've seen many other statues of her but apparently that one is famous so it was  a meeting place. the others had a much larger area to go through so they weren't there so i wondered around the area and the floors connected to that one, which included the medieval Louve section. i thought it was going to be a whole bunch of medieval painting and such but it wasn't it was the old walls of the basement which i loved! it was so quite down there because it was still decently early in the day, well maybe not actually it might have been 12 or close to that so lunch time, in any case not many people down there. i went on this one off shoot of it and it was a center stone column wall type thing but the amazing thing about this one was there was only me and this one other person who walked in before me and he had rubber soled shoes on so there was no noise in there at all, it was so cool (in the cold format of the word) and quiet i loved it, unfortuantly when i took some of the others down there for they wanted a picture with the wall since it is mentioned in Kate and Leopold there were a lot more people down there making it not as quite as i remembered.
after the Louve we went and got baguettes and ate them by the river which was fun accept my sandwich tried to leak all over me! i foiled its plot though with a  napkin and leaning. we also figured something i thought was interesting out, the river boats only go one way at certain times, when we were there it was only going up the river never down, its too small for two of those barges to pass each other i think. after lunch (which was like 3) we headed to Notre Dame where we were supposed to meet up with someone else, they got lost trying to find us, and ended up finding us when we were in the cathedral. it is a beautiful cathedral but at the same time simple, the outside is what is most amazing about it. originally it was painted many bright colors and i wonder why it is not still that way today it would make it that much more amazing (?) vibrant(?) i can't think of a proper word for it.... as we had to leave because the cathedral was about to have mass, it started to rain... we were going to go and climb the eiffel tower then but decided to wait on that since on the way to the metro stop we got soaked. so we headed back to the hotel for a bit of rest before heading out again for dinner. dinner was a stranger affair, we were all starving by the time we headed out and one of the girls wanted a salad that wasn't really expensive so we found a place that had 10 euro salad so that is where we went. i ended up having a weird sounding dish that was like meatloaf with an egg on top pretty good actually. i did have some red wine with my meal, i don't like wine at least not red wine, the first sip was good but after that it just went down hill, i did not finish it, it wasn't expensive wine which was good apperently wine in Paris is very cheap, not sure if that's just the quality or just the price or both but i'm not drinking red wine again cause i don't like it.
so then on sunday we climbed the eiffel tower and yes we climbed it! it was cheaper and a shorter line to climb the tower then to ride up a elevator, unfortuatly you can't climb to the very top but you get really far up so we were ok with that. there were too many stairs for me to count how many i climbed but it was a lot!!!
after the eiffel tower the group split up some of them were going to the Louve and things of that nature since the day before they had gone to Versailles, then some went to the impressionist art museum, then the group i was in went to the green boxes! i do so love those.
i wanted to get a better idea of what all was in those boxes plus i wanted to get another painting if i could find anything and family gifts and such. i had already gotten a print of the eiffel tower in Autumn and now i got a painting of Notre dame at night or with a very blue sky; as well as family gifts but i'm not going to tell you what those are :) there was one painting i saw that i really wanted but i saw it from the bus and never saw it again, it was of a girl with gourgous background and all the right colors i thought but i could not find it so i got other paintings that are just as good. i think i'm now going to look for a few prints or paintings from london to go with those either in my room at home or my dorm room it all depends. we just wondered and wondered around that area having a good ol time, before that we had lunch and it took us forever to find somewhere to eat! we ended up having something i'd never had before a crepe with meat in it! it was really good. then we took the metro back (oh and once we found a double decker underground train!!!! it was so weird and cool at the same time) to the hotel and left from there. and that is the paris trip.
now back to real life.....
from london with love

the amazing Irish people

on the bus ride from Bantry to Cork we had a full bus so i had this really nice lady sitting next to me. we got to talking during the ride which made the ride much more enjoyable and it was a pretty horrible ride. the roads in Ireland are... i can't even describe how horrible they are; i don't get motion sick that easily especially if i sit in the front, and on that ride i felt like i was about to puke. this lady (i either don't remember her name or i didn't get it) helped me be able to get to the train station without getting lost which without her i would have. so i found my train and got on it, the irish rails not much better than the roads. it makes it very hard to write when bumping about. unfortuantly i got to dublin about 4 in the afternoon, it takes a lot longer to travel in Ireland than you would think. i arrived just too late for the parades, but i did get to see them on the tv that night, i'm kinda glad i missed it tell you the truth cause there looked like there would have been so many people and unless i had already dropped off my bag at my hotel i would have been too worried about it to enjoy the parade; plus the commentary on the telly told me the meaning behind the parade it was off of a book called Brilliant by Roddy Doyle written especially for the 2011 st. patricks day parade. and it was a brilliant parade from what i could see. i missed that but i did get to meet my second amazingly helpful Irish person this time it was an elderly gentleman who sat next to me on the Luas (tram, trolley type thing) he was defiantly an old school gentleman, he didn't have any of the gaudy st. Patrick day garb on he only had i think it was a bundle of shamrocks or clover (whatever the traditional way to celebrate St. Patrick's day is) pined to his coat, we got to talking and he found out i'd already gotten myself slightly lost trying to get around, Dublin is not very good at posting maps or even street signs, and their streets change names like 5 times a long the same road very tourist unfriendly. so he gave me directions to my hotel and he was getting off at the same stop so he got me on the right street and told me to walk straight never left or right only straight (i thought of horse and his boy at this time "straight ahead you'll find king lune straight ahead, go straight always straight.) my hotel was about 15 to 20 min walk up a hill dragging my bag behind me!! the hotel was amazing though i had a gloriously warm night and there was a continental breakfast in the morning. on the way to meet up with Grace again in the morning(would have stayed with her but her hotel was booked up, thought my hotel was pretty close but i was wrong) first thing i got a map from the receptionist, it lied to me though. so i was pretty sure of the way back to the Luas but wasn't completely sure so i asked someone it turned out he was walking there too so we walked together, his name if i'm remembering correctly is Berkan (i'm sure about the first 3 letters anyway) he helped me buy my ticket for the Luas and i think if i would not have been able to finish paying for it he would have helped me, he is even a university student a composer of piano music he is finishing his 4th year at their music school and will be going to the royal music academy in london next year. it was fun talking about th differences between country and cities he agrees with me that country is much better. we parted ways at the end of the green line after he pointed me towards the shopping district where i was to meet grace. we did a little shopping then had a simple lunch and looked at the map to see what we wanted to see, initially i wanted to see the writers museum but it was way to far from where we were so instead we decided on kilmainham gaol which looked a lot closer, we were wrong. after walking for about 3 hours we got to the point where it was supposed to be and it wasn't there. this is when i decided that should anyone want to go to dublin i'm going to tell them stay in the city center, if you want to go somewhere outside of it figure the buses out or forget about it, it ain't happing. that's all there is to it dublin is way to chaotic for anyone to figure out how to get around unless you live there or can read gaelic. their signs are in both Gaelic and english but about half the time the english is faded. this is all i have to say about dublin love the people dislike the place, although it is the only big city i've found with that much green vegetation.
next plane flight
from dublin with love

Sea breeze, the smell of salt air and.... rocks

i know last time i wrote i said i'd write by the water but when i was by the water i ended up wondering across the rocks instead of writing. it is so gorgeous i ended up exhausting my camera battery by taking so many pictures. it was also incredibly peaceful everything here (well accept the bus rides) has been so peaceful its great now i can properly handle the big cites and the massive amount of people they entail. sitting here and looking out one window and seeing rolling green hills dotted with stones and out the other the sea, its wonderful. it seems really similar and at the same time so different from home. its so calm here i find myself constantly wondering off into my own little world. when i was by the sea i was looking in the water at the rocks and shells when something caught my eye, it was sea glass! i was very excited it was green sea glass the color of ireland. so i went on for hours looking for more all up and down the bit of coast i have access to. i loved it! the only thing missing was the sand...... there were only rocks as it seems to be in Europe the sea smell was great though. the sun is down its time for dinner next time i'll be writing from dublin!
from Bantry with love

the day of wondering now why did i do this?

so first thing our train was late making it impossible for me to make my flight, i should have taken the bus in the first place and all this would have been avoided; coulda, shoulda, woulda..... what 's done is done. so after my flight where i was rerouted to a different city i then had to catch 2 buses to get to cork then a bus to bantry and so here i am. Jean couldn't come and get me at that time but it was no big deal i had my warm cloths and the sun was shining so i found the library read a newspaper and i found a leaflet that gave me a path of historic bantry, i followed most of it then i got board so i wondered back to the town square and started writing and waited till Jean arrived and she took me to her home in the sticks (and yes that is what she called it which made me happy, and expression from home!) well it might have originated out here but whatever will write more tomorrow maybe by the water.
from ireland with love

at the train station

(these next few posts are my Ireland posts)
i left too early in one aspect the train station doesn't open until 4, and  I've been here for over an hour already and its only 2:45 for most of the time sitting here though I had a friend, now i know you told me not to talk with anyone but Dad she was single female as well, and she talked to me first. we were both headed to the same place well airport she was going to home to Milan but for both of us being together at least for a little while was better for both of us, it was safer and more fun. she told me her name but unfortunately since it was Italin and i'm bad at names so i don't remember it. she is getting her Phd in Astro-physisis and she is working in the technology part working on creating a telescope type thing that can see the new type of light that has been discovered, she's pretty coll! it was good though that i found her to hang out with because that gave me the confidence to ask the questions that needed to be asked like when the station opened. it also helped because a while after we got together a very confused boy walked by and i tried to help him but he didn't know english, he was Italian though so she was able to help him, which was good since he was looking for the bus stop and i'm not sure how many people know italian that are up this early. the unfortunate thing is that she joined him on the bus, i probably should have joined them but oh well, i only have an hour till the station opens then i'll practically be at the airport! on to IRELAND!!!!
from london with love

time for a breath!

hi! now its spring break and the last week i've been so busy with my major project and sherlock Holmes i've barley had time to breath much less sleep!( i did sleep but ya know not as much as i'd like) actually last sunday it was so weird i couldn't sleep at all, maybe i got an hour of sleep but it was horrible! i went to bed at a normal hour and just couldn't get my brain to shut up! but that is beside the point
last week was woman in white which i finished on time!! this week was Jack the Ripper and the hound of the Baskervilles and the last day of classes. with the last day of classes we all had presentations to present, a visual narrative. she gave us the project really early in the semester so i had a long time to prepare for it. unlike most times i actually worked the whole time on it, well once i figured out what i was going to do that is. they have free newspapers here and so i decided to use parts of the newspapers in my project. the class is a Gothic literature class and the project had to deal with the themes of Gothic that we saw the most, and the one i saw and wanted to deal with was appearance vs reality, also when i decided to use this theme we had only read Frankenstein which was very much appearance vs reality; but when your working from a newspaper that's kinda hard to portray. i still collected newspapers so i had this huge stack of them in my room, i called myself a newspaper stalker because every time there was someone with a newspaper on the tube i would watch them hoping they would get off the tube before me and leave their newspaper. i felt very creepy. my friends helped me in that some of them that had internships where they would go by tube would bring back the metro because that was a better newspaper then the evening standard, even though they were essentially the same thing. the evening standard is kinda a sensational newspaper which is unfortunate for the people since thats the newspaper most people read but it was good for me. like i said earlier appearance vs reality is very hard to portray out of a newspaper and that was what i wanted to work with, so i had to change my theme none of the other themes seemed to work except the theme of death and the dark side of human nature. this one was perfect at least at this time because of the rebellions in the middle east and how Gaddaffi was killing off all his people and being so bloody. i had so many articles they probably would have covered a rather large bulliten board but since i did not have that large of a space i had to cut the articles down to main points and headlines. in realiy the main prolem i had with this entire project is that they do not have walmart or target or even k-mart here, therefore to find a good board for my project i had to go to so many stores and then i had to go to even more stores to find sticky notes and tacks, for my project i had decided was going to be like a crazy conspirators wall you know where they have newspaper clippings all over the place connected by red string? well that is what i went for just on a much smaller scale, even though i would have loved to have done something that big i just didn't want to pay for something that big. my end project i thought was pretty amazing unfortuantly i didn't have any red string i only had black well one of the other girls let me use some of her black string so that was what i used so i didn't have to go and pay for it somewhere else, they really need walmart over here it would have made it much simpler. the end result looks pretty cool and i might get a picture of it and put it up soon, but that is mainly what i did last week.
one other thing well this was actually when we were on spring break, my jeans decided they wanted to finally get a hole in them but instead of in the knee which i could patch easily they decided to get a hole in an unfortunate place that i could not patch so i had to go and buy some jeans. at first i was lost and confused with their sizes but actually it is much easier then at home! i think it was the second store we went into the first was Prymart which is supposed to be the cheapest but there were so many people it was utter chaos and when we did find the jeans they were all skinny jeans which i didn't want, so we left and the next store we went into ended up being the store i bought my jeans in! when we found the jeans they had two numbers on them one that looked similar to our sizing and another that i found out was the length, when i found a good dark pair that looked about my length i also grabbed my size i thought and tried them on, they fit so perfectly! they are the right length and so far they fit around the waist without a belt! they are long enough which is almost impossible for me to find!!! we shall see how they do after this week of hard wearing, i don't have enough space or weight to bring another pair of jeans so while i'm on my trip these are the only pants i'll be wearing...
which brings us to my spring break trip!!!! i'm going to Ireland!!!!!!!!! so excited! i'll be flying into cork early tomorrow spending the day there and then on st. patricks day i'll be taking a bus up to dublin and meeting with my cousins there and having major fun going to belfast for a day and a half then back to cork to fly home/daniel house (home in london)! i am very supper excited i can't believe that in just one day i will be going somewhere i've wanted to go all my life! so now i must finish getting ready and i will be writing on a notebook to tell you of all the wonderful things i find in ireland! get excited!
from london with love

sorry

so sorry that i haven't written in like forever, i've been insanely busy, i'm trying to finish all of the woman in white by wilkie collins before the due date so that i don't have to spark note this one. the book isn't that long only like 500 pages, but it is incredibly hard to read! i shall give a very brief overview of what i have been doing the past while,
i forgot to check when i last posted but i don't think i wrote about the weekend last, so
* we went to Canterbury it was just me and a few boys which was so much fun it is different going somewhere with just boys for one thing the walking much faster, especially when you are the second shortest and the shortest person only by like an inch, which is fine and fun unless the day before you foot decided it wanted to hurt you when you walk... but that was overcome by some advil! we went to the cathedral which was the first one that you could take pictures in, and two ruins one of an abby and one of a castle the abby was st Augustans abby and i've forgotten whose castle it was.
* sunday i ended up not going to church because the day before came back to bite my foot.... when it hurts to put your shoe on you know it is not the day to go to church so i just listened to one of jasons sermons online since we had not been able to listen to it earlier in the week. i was going to head to hyde park and read that afternoon if my foot had been feeling better but then it started to rain so instead i worked on my project and read the woman in white by this time i was at the middle!
*monday internship with crazy children the teacher i work for is actually caught in new zealand at the moment but i don't think she was in the earthquake i would hope they would tell us if she was! so hopefully she'll be back tomorrow cause yall know how children get when its not their teacher in charge.... if its as crazy as last time i will be spending time at cafe nero drinking hot chocolate and reading woman in white.
*tuesday, class... and british culture class it was really interesting today at least to me we learned not about history as much this time but about actual class in britian like class structure this will have to have another blog just dedicated to class for me to expound on that, and tonight we went to see jeckle and hyde, which is a musical and i thought it was amazing morbid but amazing all the same i was so enraped in it, i almost cryed at the end, but only one other person thought of it the same way i did, everyone else thought it was rubbish.... which made me sad. part of the reason i loved it was the cussing was down to a minimum, and no one got undressed!!! so exciting. they did do a little too much rhyming in the singing but other than that i really enjoyed it, now i must go to bed cause i have to get up early tomorrow and go to school so
from london with love

hever castle

hever castle is the childhood home of Anne boylen whom i love to study! so a bunch of us went down there, taking the train with four or more people is great! for when you have that number you get a discount on your train ticket so to hever it was only about 5 pounds each great price. so we get there feeling very Narnia children like especially when we got off at the station and it was practically a slab of cement and a building. later we saw a bus stop that looked even more like it it made me happy. then we had our mile long hike to the castle (the castle was more like a manor house but more on that later) after our very very long walk in Edinburgh and walking around london every day it really wasn't all that long or hard at all. it was rather calming to tell you the truth, after the rush and loudness of London( oh funny story that just happened tonight, we were walking back and this man was crossing the street, and a car came right up to him but he was still walking and right as he was passing the car honked at him and he just swung his bag out and smacked the car hard! he really didn't want to be honked at while he was walking, and this wasn't a young guy either this was an old man, it was rather strange actually) being in the country side with bushes on each side (they were used as fences) and just walking along at our own pace was fun. we even had a few other people who were going to the castle as well following us, for we had planned ahead and had a map of how to get there it was pretty simple its not like there was much else to go other than the way to the castle but still it was kinda fun having a decently large group walking together even though we didn't all talk with each other. when we got to the castle the base floor was apparently the more modern floor so i didn't have anything especially that i wanted to see there as i walked though it admiring the ceilings (they had very ornate ceilings, not that i have any pictures of it they wouldn't let us take pictures inside! so annoying!!) then we got up to the second floor (or first if your british) and came to Anne Boylens room! it was very tiny it was not much bigger than my room here.... well actually about the size of my original cave but she looked like she had a huge bed if the head board is any indication. there were many portraits of her and all the wives of henry VIII because hever castle was part of Anne Boylen's dowry and therefore when she was beheaded it became Henry's land and he gave to to jane seymore but she died then he gave it to Anne of Cleves in their divorce settlement, so it has passed through many hands. i made a discovery when in the room where they have the paintings of all of his wives and him. each wife has a different type of headdress, Catherin of Aragon the square headdress for it is more pious and english even though she is Spanish by the time she got married to henry she was english, Anne Boylen curved which was a french headdress for she had grown up in the french court and also she would not want to look anything like catherine of aragon for she had the hardest job of them all she started the divorcing process, jane seymore wore the square to be a foil to anne boylen who was considered bad at that time because she was seen as wilder so that's back to traditional roots, i don't count anne of cleves partially because she was foreign and partially because she was only married for like 6 months and because she doesn't fit into my pattern, i can't tell exactly what type of headdress she was wearing it was weird... then we get back with Catherine howard who has the circular headdress she is actually a relative of anne boylens through her mother i do not think that she is wearing the headdress as a rebellion or a foil against someone else for anne of cleves was apparently not very pretty and catherine howard supposedly was, in some ways too pretty for she got herself killed, then you have the only unscathed survivor catherine parr, again with the square headdress could be going against what catherine howard was because catherine parr was a more moderate woman who got all of the royal children back with their father. each of his wives was the opposite of what the last one was but if you look at it there were more moderate then radical women only two of them were "wild" and those were the two who got their heads chopped off. the more moderate woman just got divorced well catherine of aragon got slowly killed while being divorced. all this to say hever castle is pretty cool in its history in the winter, it has beautiful gardens i'd say but since its still winter i they were not very pretty right then. we had a lot of fun though. as i have finished this i will now get ready for a day of classes and a new british heritage and culture teacher where we shall be going to the national portrait gallery tomorrow which i might write on, so until later
from london with love

children

i'm exhausted!!! working with these kids takes all my patcience and i have none left for the adults in my life.most of today and its going to be like this every day i have my internship i believe i will not be hanging out with other people until dinner time and then only barley on other days sure i'll hang out most likely and be fine but on monday and wednsday that will not be happening.
today was insane! we had some good ignoring muscles (that is where a child chooses to ignore the other one who is giving them problems and trying to get them into truble) but that just all fell apart as the day progressed. it seemed that telling them they were doing a good job was a bad thing, for soon after they would start missbehaving. one of the boys and i are getting along very nicely i think, he is one that has put time and effort into making himself seem helpless and making others do things for him and he likes new people because they don't know yet what he does so they help him do his work. i now know these things but i'm still the newest person and he does like doing things with me so today we worked on a project together i had to be strict with him but he seemed not to mind much especially since as we were typing, rather he was poking out what we were transfering and i could see he was getting really tired of it and so was i, plus a lot of the other children had choosing time (where they choose what they do, kinda like center time) so i helped him by him reading to me and i typed it up so it went much faster. whenever he got distracted or started yelling at someone he had to be the one to type but that wasn't very much the yelling thing for the moment he started i would try and get his attention back and we would get back to what we were doing, he even got a bonus sticker for his good work with me.
(i was going to type more on this one but i forgot about it and now its saterday and so i don't remember what i was going to write on wednsday...)

internship of chaos

i'm not going to tell about the whole week cause that would just take to long, nor am i going to (at this point in time) tell you every day about everything that happens i don't have time for both that and school to get done. i will tell whenever anything happens or i have time.
ok so interning at the collingham school/hospital. i am working in the red group at the moment it is the youngest group there are about 4 boys in the class they have not all been there at the same time though so its normally been about three of them. they are a good group for the most part there are times when we have blowups and such but these kids are special needs so that is to be expected. i really don't know what to make of them yet it is just so different than what i'm used to. like the children get up and go sit somewhere else and the teacher doesn't say something to them imediatly, they seem to use a different format for getting them to do what is wanted of them by one of the adults asking a question that gets at what the child is supposed to do like, if i wanted blank what would i have to do to get it? or i'm confused now what am i supposed to do about blank? there is a ton more i just don't know what exactly to say about it as soon as i can wrap my head around it ill get back to you.
there is one thing i would like to change though, there are a lot of adults and the kids don't trust me yet so i'm not able to work with them they won't accept me like at all. plus when there are more helpers than students it leaves normally the newest person useless and that person is me. if this keeps up i might ask to go somewhere else even if i have to change out of the school system i'm in now, really i just want to be of some use and not just sit there and watch the child do their work. i need to be needed! we shall see how it keeps on going come monday so until then
from london with love

its a wet day in Edinburgh

well now tectonically last weekend was the edinburgh weekend, so you to the going over there post before last so i will describe what i know of edinburgh to the best of my retroflection.
as soon as we all got in and got our room assignments we were set free and didn't really see our teacher or house manager again till the end. the first day it was raining, i had brought my umbrella and rain coat.... you can't use umbrellas in edinburgh not if you like your umbrella. there were so many blown inside out umbrellas in the trash! mine was almost ruined but i turned it around in time to save it, so i had very very wet hair all day. so some wanted to just wonder around but i was cold and those streets were not very nice to walk on i was in my black boots which are not the best rain and cold shoes or walking over rough stuff in. so i wanted to find somewhere inside and one of the girls in our group wanted to go to the toy museum. it was pretty cool, there were a ton of old toys there and there were a few doll houses one of them was Queen Elizabeth II's house in wales electrical and everything! that didn't take that long to go through but we had gotten there a bit late in the day so we had to leave before we were completely finished because they were closing. so then we wondered around for a bit trying to find somewhere to eat. when we did find somewhere i got sausage and mash (potatoes) the others got stake pie, which looked and they let me have a bite tasted a lot like roast beef, we also tried hagus. hagus just has a really bad rep, it tastes a lot like sausage with a bit of a different after taste thats all we finished off the side dish of it that we got. i also had desert it was an apple crumble, but it didn't have brown sugar in it or cinnamon or any spices so it was good but could have been better.
i have figured two things that are essential for every hotel to have, 1 a comfortable bed most not let you feel the springs and 2 good smelling soap/ clean towels or at least make sure they are going to be dry if you live in a wet climate. this hotel had neither of those things... i might have been better sleeping on the floor, when you got on the bed you could hear the springs crunch under you and you could feel every single spring and when i got back the second day they had folded up my towels but they were still wet a wet towel is not very efficient in drying you off especially since it was like 24 hours later. the cool thing about that room was that they had heated towel racks (the sign next to it said caution might be hot do not touch, but since it was right next to the shower i thought that it might just get hot off the shower steam so i of course touched it to figure out what it was, not very hot but very cool! the second night it was much warmer and i needed that warmth!) and we had an amazing view outside our window! it looked out on the street and right across the street and a little to the side was sir walter scott's memorial it was a kinda creepy gothic ( he was a Gothic writer) and looked like a miniature cathedral steeple type thing. we could also see both old and new edinburgh which is gourgous! both me and my roommate were exhausted both nights so the moment we both finished getting ready for bed we turned out the lights and went to sleep at like 8 or 9 both nights.
on the second day we toured the castle then decided after eating lunch at the elephant cafe which is where j.k. rowling created harry potter that we would walk to the coast, we knew it was going to be a long walk but we thought we'd get to see a pretty sunset forgetting that we are in scotland where it is grey and overcast every day, and there would be a pretty beach type thing or at least some large rocks............ as we got close to the coast we started seeing docks and sketchy things like that.... someone then directed us to a not dock place where we might be able to see the sea and such but when we got there it was just the side of a road with a path running down beside it plus on the other side of us were more and more warehouses so we really didn't want to be there when the sun set plus you really couldn't even see the sun.... so we began our 9 mile trek back to our hotel, and at the first sign of a decent restaurant we collapsed and eat there. my feet and legs were killing me! so i did not go with the others to Aurthur seat which is a mountain climb which most of them fell  at least once, instead i headed out to the one place i had been wanting to go the whole time the weaving mill to get my yarn! at first when i walked in i was very confused for just about nothing in there seemed to do with weaving, there was this creepy Gothic punk section and some random trinkets and sword type stuff, but you move a bit farther back and then you start getting to the lambs wool and cashmere then as you so through the exhibit (well sorta exhibit the official exhibit was closed) there was more and more tartan stuff but not until you get to the bottom do you find the yarn! they had huge amounts of it for ten pounds i didn't matter how much there was on the spool it was all the same price, unfortuatly the huge ones tended to have fine thread and i can't really use that for what i want it for but i found some awesome yarn that is black and white and red so now i just have to get my needles and i'll be ready for a project.
i spent most of the rest of the day shopping around finding deals getting gifts stuff like that :)
then we road back on the train about halfway through i got tired of being cut off for everyone else so i just went and stood in the aisle and talked with people in our group true i did have to keep moving out of the way for others who were coming through, like seriously do british people not know how to stay still? or at least stay in there general area? oh and we had this drunk lady who tried to take my seat but thankfully she got up without me having to tell her anything.the last adventure on our trip was a bright flash off to the side, i thought it might have been lighting so i tried to ignore it but it was not, it was something electrical with the train because not long after that flash the train stopped and we found out that the driver was going to have to walk to the back of the train and fix the problem they said it would only be a few min. they were wrong. it had to be close to an hour before we heard that the driver had fixed the problem and was not walking back to the front of the train, which apparently would take 10 min. we all then thought that our driver had to be old or infim or something cause how long could this train be? like really? but that was the last bit of excitement on the trip and we all got back safe and extreamily tired.
from lodon with love :)

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA!!!!!!!

 ok so i'm writing a little out of order but i so have to write about this now! we just got back from seeing phantom of the opera and it was so freaken amazing!!!!!!!!!! its the same one as the broadway version a little different staging of course but it was a lot cheaper, and guess what? i got to sit in the 3rd row!!!!!!!!!!! it was so close but far enough away to keep some of the illusion in all actuality one to two rows back would have been better for everything but the chandelier, the chandelier rose and dropped right over my head!!!! i had forgotten that it fell down right before intermission, so i heard a scream from above me and looked up and it was falling right on my head! seriously i think for a moment my heart stopped beating; then it kick started at twice the rate, my friend next to me said he almost started screaming himself, he had never seen phantom before and was not very used to theaters. i think this was even better than broadways version, at least as far as memory serves and my vision when i was at the broadway show, which was not very good as high up as i was. this was amazing! you could see everything and all the expressions on the actors faces!!! i was very happy. then to top it all off as we were riding back to the daniel house we saw the guy who plays RAUEL!!!!!!!!!!!!! some of us first saw him when he was walking quickly by us down the escalator and then when we were on the tube a few of the girls got to sit near him!!! of course we tried to be cool and not giggle all over the place or ask him for his autograph for he seemed to want to be like every one else, and truly we would have thought that had we not just seen the play, but it was so exciting!!! to get to ride like anyone else with a theater star! who has an amazing voice!!!!!! i was so hyper afterwards talking about everything that the others kept telling me to breath, now i have to re-calm myself down so i can go to bed will get back on track with the days in order when i get back tomorrow. until then
from london with love

Chaos

with the chaos of the past few days with school internships and getting ready for scotland this is the fist time i've had time to write, and this is not even on my blog at least the original, i'm writing this on the train, since the people around me are either sleeping or reading... there are people behind me talking and carrying on but i can't exactly join in too many seats between plus would get sick facing back that far nor could hear, well except those i think british football players in the back. i think i left off tusday afternoon so i need to tell you what happened Wednesday. no one has class on Wednesday many of us have our internships interviews mine was not till thursady so i got to hang out with those that do not have internships. we decided to go to the natural history museum for it is with in walking distance and free! i really wish trains were pressurized! my ears keep hurting when we pass another train or go through a tunnel. the natural history museum is built for children so i was loud and fun and had many hands on exhibits. since it is free we didn't feel pressured to see the whole thing at that time. i plan on going back if not in this half of the semester than next when i have fewer classes. the ticket lady just came by and said "tickets please" very train like :) when you walk into the natural history museum the first thing that greats you is a long neck dinosaur! man that thing is huge! its spinal column from neck to tail takes up like the whole foyer area and its not a small area, think size of gym added to a college size gym with stands and the beauty of a cathedral. for when we were going to church on sunday we thought the museum was the church. i do believe that the british national history museum has more dino bones than i've ever seen in my life! they had the bones on structures scale models a lot; and amazing ways of displaying them for the big ones there was an elevated walkway that  let you be almost eye to eye with them! since the british did so much hunting and exploring and there fore they have many stuffed and slightly faded creatures. they have and old panda so faded its black sections are now more brown than black. for the most part all the creatures are well preserved. they have all sorts of creatures from decently common creatures like lions and armadillos to the more exotic and creatures that nowadays can't be hunted like vampire bats and snow leopards. they also have a blue whale, i kinda doubt that it is a skin but i could be wrong. they have so much stuff that we saw in our few hours there that i could spend pages and hours writing about it. i'm not going to do that. in the afternoon we went to oxford st. where the normal people shop. one of the girls wanted to get an across purse and i wanted a more professional not quite so touristy looking one if i could find one in my price range which was cheep. both of us found what we wanted in our range which was great! it took us a really long time to find them . most of the stores were ridiculously expensive or the bags were huge and not across bags. so i had my bag to look good for my interview and she got her every day bag everyone happy!
that leads to thursday which defiantly was a day of chaos! get up have breakfast hurry upstaris start packing for Edinburgh, run downstairs for class, go to the science museum only see the part on medicine on this trip because need to get back for a quickish lunch, then iron shirt have to leave iron there to cool off, run upstairs have to stop running half way up stair cause tired (live on 4th floor coming from basement) finish walking upstairs put in contacts, put on makeup figure out whither to war socks with borrowed flats or not, finish getting ready fix hair (pointless the wind in the tube station ruins any style), then run down stairs thank friend heartily for helping me out by putting the iron up for me and leave, oh yeah and some where in there started a 2 pages reflection paper due friday. then with barley a breath get to the tube and hope dearly nothing happens even though planned in time for a shot stop other than normal, the circle line has been having issues lately, but didn't on this trip. get to paddington only have slight trouble locating sign for my exit, couldn't completely read the sign contacts went screwy, then had no trouble finding the hospital, so i was there waay early, almost 30 min. early wait more than that. so i kinda wondered around the elevators, they have small elevators so i let others go first then in a close to empty one i finally went up and found where the school room was supposed to be, here i encountered a slight problem, i couldn't open the doors! it wasn't a lack of strength so i had no idea what to do, my instructions just said follow signs that say schoolroom and i didn't see any signs except the pull that told me how to get in so i look around for help and apparently i looked very confused for a doctor or someone who works at the hospital told me so, sh showed me a button i could have pressed that would have paged the receptionist who would have let me through but his card worked so he let me through, it properly would have been good for him to have checked some id or something but i guess the confusion on my face and my slight stuttering when i told him what i was doing let me be trustworthy. since i was massively early they were not ready for me. while i was waiting they offered me tea or coffee, at home i would have said i'm fine but we have been encouraged to accept it and take tea breaks with them so i said sure. they made coffee...... i really don't like coffee, don't like the smell from home, but i wasn't going to be rude so i accepted a cup and put a lot of milk and sugar in it; i don't think there is enough of anything to make that stuff taste good. i only was able to force down 2 sips. in my interview she had already placed me, so we just talked about what the schools were and what i could expect in my internship. since my stuff came in later than many others she didn't have many places for me to go, nor do i have any experience in the type of children they deal with so she just put me where they had a spot, so coming Monday i will be at least i think so i will be at the psychiatric branch. she said the bunch they have right now are a calmer bunch so a good group to coming in on. without a moments rest when that was over i scurried home to go to the theater! we watched As You Like It which is an awesome play when seen in person. some of us read it before just so we had an idea of what we were getting into. seeing it performed by a Shakespeare company with british and irish accents makes it that much better! i really don't think there can be any comparison to Shakespeare performed by the british!
oh and i finished my paper that night so i didn't have to bring my computer with me. somehow i succeed in being completely ready ( i think) and finished my homework and i even got up in time ( o dark 30) for the tube to the train, and now i've even caught you up to me. as my pen somehow someway bleeds on my fingers i feel like and author of old a scribbler if you will with that
from london with love

sorry

i'm dead tired on my feet barley from reading 60 pages on my computer for tomorrows class... and i have my internship interview tomorrow and other stuff so i might be able to write tomorrow but that is doubtful. i have to pack as well since we are leaving o'dark 30 in the morning for Edinburgh Scotland and i will not be bringing my computer with me so if i get a chance i will post about today and tomorrow, tomorrow. if not i will write a very long post on monday or sunday night. goodnight yall!
from london with love

classes and internship

today we had our first Gothic lit class and the first British heritage and culture. in the gothic lit course it is very very obvious that we are samford students, there is but one boy in our class. we began to go over frankenstine and will finish it on Thursday. after that class we had lunch which was going to be pleasurably long until it was one when we found out that our teacher was here an hour early! so we snarfed down our food and headed to class. at the beginning everyone was falling asleep not because he was exactally boring nor was he exciting but still we were all so tired, taking notes was the only way i could stay awake. the class ended up being good but it was just a slow start, while being good the class has been so far about the religion of the britians. the funny thing is that we americans and learning about british heritage from a scottish man. since he is scottish/british in the middle of class we had a tea break. immediately following class me and the other girl who is going to be working in a school and we took the tube waay out there and then a bus and then walked but we found it! then we came back and started again to my internship site. mine was not very hard to get to at least by the tube, getting out of the tube station was. paddingtion station was absolute chaos! it is also a train station and man are those confusing! it took me a very long while to find where i was supposed to go to get to the street. when i did finally get to the street i wanted was very sketchy... it was like a alley way it might not in the light but when i got there it was after 5 and the sun sets here about 4. so i walk through the sketchy part of it and come to the hospital which is called queen elizabeth the queen mothers hospital... there can't be a queen elizabeth queen mother.... cause there have only been two queen elizabeths and one was the virgin queen and the other is still reigning.... unless they mean elizabeth of york who was so long ago uniting the houses of york and lancester before the tudors, or if their has been a married into queen elizabeth i guess that wouldn't count in the count of queens for their names. well i wouldn't find out anything about it until thrusday afternoon when i have my interview.
seeing as how i've been very distractable while writing this message i have successfully washed my clothes  note i did not say washed and dried, for the dryer here is not very good.... even when i took out all of my shirts it still did not completely dry my socks and underwear, they are now completing their drying layed out on my desk, and all my shirts are downstairs on a drying rack seeing as how my room is very narrow and tiny, my cave at the old lake house is bigger, last semesters dorm room was way bigger, my freshman dorm room was even bigger and that was a single, so there is no room in here for both them and me. now if i was going to be leaving my room for the whole day then i might have been able to leave them in here if i could find a rack to put them on.... maybe i could have borrowed my next door neighbors top bunk as well as using my bunk and ladder... that could work. maybe.
that has pretty much been the escapades of the day except for two things
1) the british do not use .com they use .co.uk so i'm wondering did the internet start in america? or what? i've never had to use it anywhere else other than america till now so i don't know what other countries use, although i do know that many things you want to use from america can't be used here and that makes me sad at times
2) i tried to make an omelet with spinach in it that kinda failed.... i made it, it just turned into scrambled omelette's and the eggs here taste a good bit better, although that might have been the fact that it was almost 8 and i was starving.
off to read the newspaper and go to bed
from london with love

"the first day of classes"

today was supposed to be the first day of classes and to those that were talking theater apprec. it was for the four of us who aren't we didn't have anything to do. true all four of us are doing internships so this morning we had an internship meeting and i found out that might sight is not in walking distance like we thought. somehow i have to get from my stop at the circle line over to paddingtion (which is on another line) but we (this means i consulted with someone who has some clue about these lines) that it shares a stop like three lines share the same stop we shall find out tomorrow. for tomorrow is the day we are to get lost and to find where we will be going at least for our interview. ayaya! so never racking just to think of it! but good thing is that if i go by tube i can get the morning paper for free and read or at least give it a glance over to see what the people at work might be talking about, cause if i had to walk there would be no way i could get to a newspaper in the morning i'd be too worried about running into poles to read while walking. since i will be working in a school i have to get approved by their government as well, so i will be approved to work with any children in the us and uk! :) so the FBI approves of me and know i think it might go to Scotland yard maybe if so then they will approve of me too! and i'll be all safe and secure and can never commit a crime here or there cause they know who i am.
i have started a rewards system for myself, reading the books for class is not as easy as it sounds there are so many exciting things going on and i don't want to be anti social but i can't really read around other people doing fun stuff, and i keep going to sleep while reading. so i found a book I've really been wanting to read called watching the English its by an anthropologist and what i had read at home was really good and i really want to read it but i've told myself i can't even open it till i have at least gotten half way through the second section of frankenstin would be better if i finished the whole thing but not sure if thats going to happen tonight.
another good thing that i've done is create my grocery list/ stuff i plan on eating during the week. my best friend here showed me this site called kraftrecipies.com and it gives you some quick and easy recipes and all that you need for them and that sort of stuff, also you can add ones that you like to your recipe box and also to a foods list, where it complies all of the food that you would need to make all that you wanted to very easy. all i have to do is find some of these things in a British market, there in-lines the hard part. they don't have everything we do. plus i've figured something else out i much prefer baking to cooking. it is much more rewarding or maybe if i wasn't just cooking for myself it would be better. i'm not sure but sometime soon i might bake cookies for the house or bake something sweet, we don't have a lot of that in the house and we just need something to be baked here. maybe i could convince someone to cook my dinner and i bake a pie or cake or something sweet that i love to do. they cook i bake, i'd love that. now to try and read frankenstine some more so i can read what i really want to read so for now
from london with love

Sundays museum

so today is Sunday and we went to holy trinity church which is a very long walk from our home! we thought we were going to be walking to the tube then you know maybe walking a little ways not as far as we did! the outside of the church was beautiful and old, the inside was not so old... very whitewashed. that made me sad cause i could see past the pulpit (of a sorts) that the church had very beautiful old walls and paintings, the new parts of it did not do it justice. as the service was about to start i was surprised at the amount of children and infants still in the sanctuary, i don't know if they even have a nursery there i kinda doubt it. they do have a children's church that leave a bit before the service. the service was unusual, in the first place the pastor was wearing jeans, no tie of course it just seemed kinda weird to me for a pastor to be so informal. mom always told me in a sermon to take out the meat and leave the bones, well this sermon tested that, cause there was only like doves meat amount and then there were things i didn't agree with still don't exactly know how to handle. he talked about healing, and times when he had actually laid hands on people prayed and they'd been healed. his stories didn't seem like crackpot theories or like he was trying to pull the wool over our eyes but i just don't know what to believe about that. i know that my church doesn't believe that one prayer will change everything if so i would have gone up to them right then and there when they asked if anyone had an infirmity they would like to be prayed for. i don't know for now i'm going to stick by what i know and keep that in the back of my mind till like doubting Thomas i'm shown something that proves it.
so after the very long walk back and a quick lunch we headed to the British museum which is free! which is brilliant! shawn our guide was back so we got information that we wouldn't have had otherwise. we went into this one room and it had so many old books i was very excited! no one else seemed to get why i was excited old books are my passion i love to just look at them and be near that much knowledge now i know  i can't touch them or read them but just to see what all there is what all the kings of old gathered together. for the artifacts in that room are from kings and very wealthy collectors from a very long time ago. they even have fakes in that room very old fakes but fakes none the less. we got to see a fake merperson, which looked like a fetus before the legs are shaped but shawn said it might have been monkey parts glued to fish maybe. and they had a copy of the Rosetta stone, which i also got to see the original which is pretty cool. the real Rosetta stone is in the Egyptian artifacts room they have some good stuff there but the real stuff that most people want to look at is not in the artifacts room but upstairs its the mummies! british were almost famous for their looting of tombs second only to the french i think and you know those old brits could never be beaten by the french! they also have parts of the original Parthenon, the top part of one of the columns, many of the fresco, and a few of the statues to the gods, but they are missing a critical part to almost all of them the heads! since the Parthenon was blown up by the turks the heads and arms of just about everything fell off, plus the Parthenon was used as a Christian church and a Muslim mosque so they wouldn't want statues to the Greek gods and goddesses around them. we also saw the crystal skull like used in the last Indiana Jones movie but it was not made by the Aztecs how it was made was too modern for them to have created it. while on the tour we only hit the highlights i shall have to come back another time and see the rest of it. it will take many other times for that. well i must go to bed i actually have class in the morning and i'm meeting with the people for my internship stuff! most nervous
from london with love

MARKET DAY!!

today is saterday and in the world of orintating londerners that is market day, most markets in london don't open till about 10 which rockes for those of us who like to sleep in! we still got a later start then intended but that was ok cause it meant that the day just started slower which after the caous of what has normally been happening its wonderful. we decided to go to portabella market because it would have fresh fruits and veggies, Camden market is the main place to go but it is open every day and portabella only on saterdays maybe Sundays i don't know. portabella market is also a antiques market so we had to skim though some of that stuff before we got to the fruits and veggies. if you know how crowded new York is in like times square when there is a star or something going on and how things move then, then you might have an idea of how crowded the market was. there were so many people and so much stuff it was ridiculous! there were even random cars going through that would not be fun cause you would have to wait on people to move out of your way and for the most part they had no idea you were there or they had no way to get out of your way it was slow moving for the people in the cars. everyone seemed to be having a great time and you could pretty much tell who the true Londoners were because they were the ones who would go up to a stand know what they wanted and how to get it and how much to pay for it and all those things. and all the tourists myself included were the ones taking pictures of the market and wondering around and all about being confused. it was even more confusing because they are doing work on the underground (which is not always underground there are a few above ground stops) which closed down the whole circle line, which is the main line we get on to get home.so we had to be rerouted through buses, we finally got the tube system almost down then we have to try and lean the bus system too? thats a bit to much its the same way for the londeners i believe. oh their closing down the tube stations for work so it will look better and be more equipped for the Olympics in 2012, from the bus driver who brought us in to london the first day said that they are on budget and on time for now. back to the market, there were lots of cool things there and the staples, apples oranges, blood oranges, spinach, just about anything you could want, they even had this weird little fruit i guess it was and now i can't remember the spelling of it but it was small and a orangeish red, and kinda spiky all over, we asked one of the stall keepers what it was and she lets us try one! you peel of the skin and inside its kinda meaty and sweet, even though they were small you wouldn't want more than one or two at a time. i think i might be getting some of those soon for a sweet snack.
since it was like absolutely freezing outside we only lasted a few hours but it was worth it and so much fun! we went back home for lunch since we had bought groceries earlier and thought that we should probably use them.we ended up talking with a few other people in the kitchen until almost dinner time. right before dinner i had to help another person go and get her groceries cause she hadn't gotten any yet. when we got back everyone was busy at cooking when i finally got to cooking (i had spinach and regatta catiolini in a tomato basil sauce with montzarella cheese on top) i kinda burnt most of my sauce cause i left it in too long. i  read how long it said to leave it in there but i guess something was wrong it was really good even without a lot of sauce. after dinner some of us were just sitting around talking which had been a lot of fun... well for all but the lone guy at the table, we kinda got off on some feminist rants :) and not just me that boy though knows more than many of the boys here about girls if he actually listened to our conversations cause we completely forgot he was there, he could definitely if he wanted to do a study on girls and how we interact cause we forget he's there sometimes cause he's always around. ok so back to what i was getting at when i started this paragraph sorta... another boy had come in by this time and he had started reading as you were by Shakespeare one of the girls there asked him to read it aloud so he started to, when there was a character change he asked the other boy at the table to help him and so began our night of Shakespeare! i helped by reading Rosalind and a few other characters but it was much fun! we got to act three and we shall finish it tomorrow night. they all have to read it for their theater class plus we are going to be seeing that play on Tuesday night the first theater night!! i am very excited! now though i must read frankenstine for one of my classes so until later,
from london with love

the first week

this is london from the eyes of an ADD girl. with that being said there will be times when i dart back to or change subject it seems at random, its not random it makes sense to me. some days i will write a lot and some days not at all some even in between but it will all be about London and the fun and not so fun times had here.

to catch you up to where i am i shall write an abrivated version of the events
day one, get here around 12 move in and eat lunch finish that about 3 then go out and find Salisbury which is like publix and walmart mixed, find the post office, and get our oyster cards. after we get everything we head out for big Ben! it was dark by then and we were all very tired but we wondered around a bit after that just to keep ourselves up for a bit and figure stuff out things like that. when we got back to the rooms it was time to unpack then sleep!

day two
we went on scavenger hunts my group went to Westminster, st. Margret cathedral, st. martin-in-the-field, Piccadilly circus, and we saw the national portrait gallery which was free so i liked it and i'm going back later when i have more time to see it all. i only got to see the Tudors and a bit of the Victorians. my group was still rather jet lagged so we didn't do as much as some of the others. i think that was only the second half of the day and i have no idea what we did for the first half. that night we were on our own for dinner a few of us went to wagamama or something like that, not worth it personally and while it is a chain in london it is not cheep i was hungry afterwards
day three
we all went on a tour of the places around us in the royal boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, with our neighbor who knew where all the famous people had lived and those that had wives living after them if they still lived there. after the adventure with him and the London buses, we had lunch and went out again to see Westminster where we had an awesome guide named Shawn who is Scottish! he thinks he knows some american culture and reference's but he does not, he is rather humorous though, he has a very dry humor. he does know a lot of information though which makes him an amazing guide!

day four
which is today which is Friday. today we had a London pass which i totally suggest getting if your in London for any time at all well a day not if its less than a day your not here long enough otherwise. i accentually slept in a bit because there was this horrible generator keeping me up past midnight so i was dead tired. it turned out to be a good thing though because the girl who had been delayed was finally able to get here and she and i along with a few other people went out to see some of the sights of london! first we went to see the tower of london, which is not actually a tower but more like a castle. we saw the white tower and the tower where everyone was kept before they were executed or released. i also saw the crown jewels man where they a sight to behold! every crown had so many priceless jewels on it and each had a jewel from a foreign country as well on it. it was interesting though to see what some of them had for their crowns. a few had specially made crowns because of some reason or another the information i got did not give me all that info. ill have to look it up sometime and let you know. when i was looking in the rooms where everyone was kept and anne boylen had been kept there too but since she was such a lady of course she didn't carve anything into the walls but many others did! it was so cool to be able to see so far back into the history of england that way. they had even figured out that some of the writings were from lady jane grey supporters. i would have like a bit more time around the towers but we did have more things to see. plus the others in my group were not as enthusiastic about it as i was, thats ok i'll go again when my parents come they will love it! my dad at least will.  after the tower and a quick lunch at a restraunt right across from the tower we went to St. Pauls cathedral. i suggest getting a guide if you every go there. there are a ton of statues in that place most if not all of whom i have no idea who they were or why they were important sure i ready the places that they had written for them  on their statue but that didn't make any difference. i still had no idea who they were. the only cool thing about that place is the whispering galley you climb 250 steps and you get to look out over the floor from in the dome, and if your really brave or not tired you can walk 119 i think it is more up mega spiral staircases and go the the very top of the dome and look down. it was quite fun. after the piety of st. pauls we went to the opposite of it on the opposite side of the Thames, the Globe theater!the globe is awesome as well ( i should probably start looking for other adjectives) first you get to go though a "museum" but not really more like an exhibit that even has old costumes or costume look a likes that show you what they would have used in Shakespeare's times. they also give you the history of the globe. there is some sort of set at the bottom, i ran out of time so i don't know what exactly it was for but it looked very midsummer nights dream. it wasn't where they put on plays they do that in the open air globe, so as you can imagine its very cold! they rebuilt the globe to the exact standards it was before so its as authentic as you can get and still be safe. wooden boards, wooden nails, wooden seats, and they still have the groundings portion. that is a big part of Shakespeare's plays is the groundings part in it. having them there also keeps the actors on their toes. i hope i get to go to a play there but they don't open until march because of the cold, if i do go i'm so going as a grounding, then again do i really want to stand the whole time?
well that catches you up so until next time
from london with love.