Great Thursday

After a fun Writing class I made the trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) for Art History.  We spent time looking in the Medieval and Renaissance Art portion of the museum and talking about the influences of the times.  We saw works by Michelangelo, Donatello, and saw one of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks.  It's pretty incredible to think that Leonardo actually wrote in the little book that was right in front of us (especially writing everything mirrored from right to left).

The weather yesterday also couldn't have been much better- around 80 degrees fahrenheit and clear blue skies.  We got let out of Art an hour early so Addie, Maria, and I went to Hyde Park to enjoy the day.  We walked around for a while and then sat in the shade next to the water before making the two mile walk back to Bloomsbury.  Still wanting to enjoy the beautiful weather, we decided to stop at a pub on the way home and sat outside.  This will now be tradition on Thursday afternoons.

After getting home, I ate dinner and then got ready to go to club Pacha for the night.  We got there around 10:30 and stayed until around 2 a.m. but got to listen to DJ Hardwell.  By far the best DJ we've seen so far!  A really really great night out was capped by a 3 mile walk home with Brian, Molly, and Maria which included a stop by Buckingham Palace at 2:30 in the morning.  Doesn't get much better than that!  

Fun at Buckingham Palace

Trip to Bath and Stonehenge

So it's been a while since my last post, but I'm very much alive and having a blast!  The past week has flown by but was capped off by a day trip to Bath and Stonehenge yesterday.  By far one of my favorite days since I've been here.  Bath was an amazing town with a really great feel, gorgeous countryside all around it, not to mention the great 2000 year old Roman Baths.  So cool!  Then after spending the entire morning at Bath and around the town we took an hour long bus ride to Stonehenge.  Stonehenge was possibly one of the coolest things I've ever seen.  You're just driving along through the farm land, looking at pretty much the same scenery for close to an hour, and then all of a sudden it's there.  This 5000 year old rock structure with rocks quarried 200 miles away and now line up with stars.  Really really cool and just fascinating.  A great end to a fun week!

                                                                   The streets of Bath

                                                                  The pub where we at lunch

                                                                     The Bath Abbey

 
                                                            The beautiful countryside

                                          The gardens by the river.  At the level of the Roman city

                                                                            Awesome Jans

                                              The drain of the springs with iron mineral buildups

                                                                        The main pool
 

                                                The main pool with the Bath Abbey above it

                                                                           Stonehenge

                                                               One of my favorite pictures

Today is a Sad Day...

I have to do laundry

Into the Third Week

It's official...We are now into our third week here in London!  It was a pretty good week and the first week of having my schedule the way it will be for the rest of the time.  It looks like this:

Monday: Free
Tuesday: Social Foundations 10-1
Wednesday: History of Modern Europe 1:30-4:30
Thursday: Writing 9-12;  History of Western Art 2-5
Friday: Free
 *Classes are three hours but we have  half hour break in the middle

Aside from having some really cool classes (especially History of Modern Europe and History of Western Art), I only have 3 days of class a week.  How awesome is that?  More time for homework, fun, and especially traveling!

On Monday, my roommate, Jack, and I decided to head to the Imperial War Museum for a presentation we had to give for our writing class later in the week.  We checked out the museums website, saw that it was only a fifteen minute bike ride from our flat, and decided to give the rental bikes a shot (London has a cool bike rental program where you can pay 1 pound and use a bike for as long as you need it and then return it to another bike station when you're done).  The bike ride was just as much an adventure as the museum itself.  We rode our bikes through London, across the Thames, and to the museum, all while driving down the wrong side of the road, weaving in and out of traffic lanes, and avoiding busses.  I think Jack and I both   described the ride as "one of the scariest things we'd ever done."  We made it there safely, though, and ended up having an awesome time.

Tuesday night was Big Dinner Night!  In our second week, we prepared four types of pasta and four types of sauces for 20 people, along with a caprese salad and warm baguettes with olive oil.  Two weeks, two victories.  This one did take significantly less effort than the pizza, however, and was much less time consuming.

All in all, reading got finished on time for class, classes went well, and it was a good week!  Now here we go for another weekend!

                                                            The Imperial War Museum

                                           Jack wasn't too thrilled after the bike ride...Or that I posted this

                                                        Five levels of really cool exhibits

                                                   Part of the Berlin Wall outside the Museum

                                          Biking across the Thames on a windy (but sunny!) day

                             
                                               The front of the bus that almost took out Jack
           
                                         

                                       My personal favorite: this bike lock just did not stop anyone.  

Brightoning your day

Yesterday we took a trip to Brighton by the sea.  A pretty touristy place but still very cool.

After waking up 10 minutes before we were supposed to be on the bus we took a two hour ride to the England's southern coast.  Once we got there we went on an hour long tour of the Royal Pavillion - King George III's summer home and then explored downtown Brighton.  The town itself was really nice; lots of little alley ways with vintage clothing stores, record stores, and little pubs and one of Britain's top 10 chip pies.   After looking for the place for close to an hour, we sat down and I gorged myself on one of the biggest fish n' chip plates I've ever seen.  Once we'd recovered we walked back to the beach and pier and checked out the British beach...nice, but just a little different than American beaches.

Once we arrived back in London after a heinous, three hour, traffic jam filled bus ride my roommates and I ate some brie on a baguette and then headed out to Fabric; a club in London about a twenty minute walk from our flat.  We all got a little taste of London's underground techno, electro, dub-techno scene.  Definitely crazy.

An awesome day overall, though.  Now two more days of weekend before class on Tuesday

                      

The Royal Pavillion:  Not a bad summer home                                      Brighton streets

One of the coolest streets

    Roommates Micah and Jack during their food-  induced comas


Chippie...

   
















The Brighton beach from the pier

Just a tad rocky

Thanks to Thomas Isen for the picture.  Club Fabric.  Insane.

Pizza'd out

I officially have a 4-day weekend!  Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and now Monday are all completely free.  I switched out of a 10 a.m. Microeconomics class on Mondays and picked up a Social Foundations class on tuesday mornings so now I'll have an extra day to travel or recover from a trip if I need it.  Maybe it will be used for homework, too.  We'll see.

But after class on Tuesday, my roommate Jack and I set to work to cook dinner for 18 or so other Jans that signed up.  Everyone gave us 5 pounds, we went to the store, we cooked for a long time, and the finished product was 12 delicious, homemade pizza pies.  A lot of work but definitely worth it and also a good start to our weekly Tuesday night Big Dinners.

 

Mmmmmm....Pizza

Here we go...

Hey everybody!  I was looking for a way to keep everyone updated on my trip and I think this is the way to go!  Hopefully every couple days I'll be able to update it and document my time in London and wherever I manage to go while I'm here.

The first week was pretty filled with mandatory orientation events and information sessions that essentially told us how to survive here but were pretty tedious (especially after a red-eye flight that got me to London at 1 am Eastern Time).  There were some good orientation events, though like the London bus tour and a half-day trip to Greenwich yesterday.

Classes started today and I've successfully managed to find my way around Bloomsbury (our neighborhood) and, more importantly, to find food!  Success.

Hope you enjoy this,

Cheers!

                                         
                                                           Does it get anymore British?

                            Big Ben                                                             Buckingham Palace

     Queen Elizabeth's house in Greenwich.              
The design for the White House came from this palace.
The London Eye from the River Boat on the
way to Greenwich.  Also the world's largest
ferris wheel.

The City of London.  The city itself is only 1 square       A wing of the palace at Greenwich on the banks        
mile and has mostly financial buildings, while Greater     of The River Thames                                            
London encompasses the rest of London.



Greenwich Park: Home of the Equestrian events during
the 2012 Summer Olympics (hence the green fences)
The building at the top is the start of time and the
home of the Prime Meridean