On the Monday after the London Marathon I finished my last Museum Monday. I went to a suburb of London, called Greenwich. This is a very popular upper class suburb and a very nice area. The Queen has a royal palace here too. It took me quite a bit of time to reach Greenwich because it is located in Southeast London, which can take a while to reach on the Tube. It was a wonderful day outside for an adventure. Greenwich is possibly most popular because it is home to The Royal Observatory where the Prime Meridian passes through. The Prime Meridian is the meridian at which the longitude is defined to be 0 degrees. The first thing I did was visit this sight. I stood with one leg on each side of the meridian line and now I can say I have straddled two hemispheres. It was a cool thing to see and say I have done, but not overly exciting, especially by myself. The Royal Observatory was a neat, old building with lots of telescopes and other solar artifacts inside. After looking around there for a bit, I headed to the National Maritime Museum. This was a vast museum with tons of interesting things to look at. Greenwich has long been associated with sea and navigation because it is right down the River Thames from London. The entire museum was focused around Britain's history at sea. The vast collection included maritime art, cartography, ship models and plans, scientific and navigational instruments, and instruments for time-keeping and astronomy. This was so different from any other museum that I have visited and I really enjoyed browsing around this museum! Although I have been on 3 cruises I didn’t understand half of what I was looking at, but I now have a much better understanding and a lot more respect for the history and study of sea and navigation. After the museum I decided to check out the Greenwich Park. It was a fabulous park with cherry trees and flowers were blooming everywhere. The park was full of life and I spent a bit of time looking around and watching people. I saw an English Bulldog in the park too. The little guy ran right up to me and started chewing on my boot. It was pretty cute and made me miss my dog a lot. The owner apologized for his dog's behavior. I told him it was fine and that I had a bulldog at home. The man was quite shocked that we have English Bulldogs in the States. I wanted to tell him that just because they are English, doesn't mean they haven't been allowed out of the country. However, I just smiled. The town had some cute little stores and boutiques as well, which of course I spent a bit of time looking into. Greenwich was a really nice day excursion for me. It is still part of London, but very different from Central London with more of a town atmosphere rather than city. Below pictures of The Royal Observatory, Queen's Palace and some shots in the Greenwich Park.
This Tuesday was my last day of my internship. Nothing really exciting happened. I worked on updating the database all day. I found myself alone at Hoxton Trust for a great deal of the day again as Karina, my supervisor, had appointments. We met for my last lunch and had a good time. She was very pleased with the work I have completed for her throughout the semester. She told me to keep in touch and let her know if I ever needed a reference for a future job. An internship, providing work experience, abroad will be a great asset to my resume and will hopefully make me stand out! We talked all about my future plans and she told me more about her life, as always. Even though at times I thought Karina was a little off the wall, it was hard to think that I would most likely never again see her again and my experience was slowly coming to a close here in London.
The majority of the rest of the week I was really busy working on my final papers. I wanted to get both of my big final essays completed by the time my Mom arrived. Here the professors assign essays a little differently than in the States. Normally I am required to write an essay of certain page length for my professors at home, however here they give you a word count. At first I thought it would be easier to meet a word count requirement instead of a page length requirement. However, I have found out that it isn't. I had a 3000 word and 2500 word essay due. That is a lot of words that turned out being over 10 pages for each essay. I know I shouldn't complain, but after having minimal homework all semester, this was a task. I did manage to complete both assignments before my Mom arrived though!
On Wednesday night I went out with all the girls in my program for a Girl's Night. This was very fun and a great time. We all wished that we would have done a Girl's Night in the beginning of the semester. We got a big reservation for all 30 of us at a club with a restaurant and had a blast, until the check came. Restaurants here do not split bills, even if you ask them to. They refuse to do it. This gets incredibly annoying because you always have to have exact cash on you to pay your part of the bill. Well imagine splitting a huge bill between 30 girls. Some people had over 4 drinks on their tab plus food. It was a disaster that took about 45 minutes to figure out! What a process, but we eventually got it taken care of and no one got ripped off too much.
On Thursday in my Contemporary Britain class we were having a discussion. I can’t even remember how we got on the topic of holidays, but suddenly one obnoxious girl from my program said out loud, “Wait, you mean the British don’t celebrate Thanksgiving?” I couldn’t believe she was stupid enough to ask that question and looked toward my professor for her reaction. She just kind of stood there with her mouth open with the look on her face that implied, are you stupid? Then the professor just simply asked the girl, “Well think about it, what do we have to be thankful for?” She still didn’t get it. Finally someone in my class spoke up and asked her if she ever learned the story of Christopher Columbus. I couldn’t believe she didn’t understand why Americans celebrate Thanksgiving and no one else does and I know some others in the class had no idea either. It was quite a funny thing to watch transpire in the classroom. I couldn’t even feel bad for the girl; my goodness, think before you speak!
On Thursday night I went to Roller Disco with some girls. This was so much fun, but slightly scary. We got all dressed up in eighties neon clothing, with the wild make up and side pony tails. You should have seen the looks we were getting in the Tube on the way to the Disco! I haven't roller skated since middle school, when roller skating rinks were the thing to do for your birthday. I was quite surprised how well I did. I didn't fall one time! Maybe I am finally over my adolescent clumsiness! The only problem with Roller Disco was that alcohol was served at this place. Just imagine drunken people on roller skates, quite the combination! There were people falling all over the place. It was hilarious to watch actually, but nuts to try to skate around people. I don't want you to get the wrong impression and think this was just a big dangerous party. It was actually quite organized, trust me I would know! There were referees on skates who blew really loud whistles for everyone to stop when someone fell. There were also quite a few employees skating around helping people skate and examining who needed to call it a night. They also had a medic at this place. Of course, I would know because there is never a dull moment in my life! My friend, Allison, got tripped up and took a pretty hard fall. She got up holding her elbow and looked like she was going to cry. One of the whistle blowers made us go see the medic just to make sure she wasn't really hurt. This guy was very nice and the set up was great, nothing like in Switzerland! He even gave us candy. Although skating was pretty fun, we didn't hang around for more than a couple hours because skating around in a circle can get boring after a while, especially when everyone else around you is tipsy while you are sober. I don't know how we did it for so long in middle school. This sure was a blast from the past! Below pictures at Roller Disco with the Girls.
That Friday, my program took us all to Brighton, a seaside town on the south coast of England right on the English Channel. Brighton is an extremely popular place for Londoners to escape to for the weekends and short holidays. There is a pebble beach and a great pier. Of course, there is some fabulous, unique shopping too. Our director told us it is also a very popular place to hold Hen and Stag parties. Hen and Stag parties are what they call Bachelorette and Bachelor parties over here. I loved these new phrases. It is also common for the British to call a Girl’s Night a Hen Night. It only took us 45 minutes by train to get to Brighton. When we arrived we walked around a bit and got a little tour from our director. He showed us where to get the best candy floss (what they call cotton candy) and fish and chips. Then we headed to the Royal Pavilion for a tour. The Royal Pavilion was previously a royal palace. King George IV built this royal residence in the 1800's. He was very amused by oriental design and absolute luxury, so this place is really something. When Queen Victoria came to reign she decided to sell the Royal Pavilion, apparently it just wasn’t palace material. It is currently owned by the town of Brighton. The interior of the Royal Pavilion was quite impressive and it just amazed me how much money was and is spent on these palaces to make them absolutely lavish and stunning. I most appreciated the dining room in this palace. The chandelier weighed some 3 tons and was immaculate. The dinner table sat over 50 guests; I couldn’t imagine going to a dinner party in this place. After the tour, Allison, Carissa, my roommate, Rebecca, and I took a look around the outside of the Royal Pavilion. It was just bizarre, you will see in the pictures below.
Next we went to grab lunch. We went to the pub with great fish and chips. I do not care for fish, so I got a tasty Alfredo pasta dish. Then we walked along the pier for a while. It was a great pier with lot of food stands and a whole bunch of carnival rides at the end. I do not care for carnival rides much either, and frankly have outgrown them. However, I did get a great Snickers milkshake and some sugar donuts. I hadn’t had a milkshake since I left home and it was amazing. We walked the promenade too and checked out the pebble beach. Our program director warned us that there could be topless women sun bathing on the beach. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing that and thank goodness I didn’t have to because it was way too cold for anyone to be laying out. I have never been to a pebble beach before, but it was kind of nice. I collected some great rocks and seashells! We did a bit of browsing in the shops before we headed back to London. I enjoyed Brighton for the day and could even spend a weekend there, but there is just something about getting back into the city that makes you feel right again. Below pictures of the Brighton Pier.
On Saturday Carissa, Allison and I went to check out the 2012 Olympic Park. If any of you didn’t know, London is hosting the next summer Olympics, in 2012. The city is quite excited, but under a lot of pressure to outdo China, which I don’t know if it is even plausible. Anyways, it was a little bit of a journey to get to the Olympic Park area from Central London. The city chose an overrun area in East London to renovate for the games. It is understandable that they had to choose an area a little out of the way and deserted since such large space is needed to build massive stadiums and facilities for the events. I was quite surprised to see that a there is still a lot of work to be done. We were able to see most of the main buildings frames and outer edges. It was pretty neat to see the huge stadium in the works. The plans they have drawn up for the area look fantastic. It would be cool to see the finished product, but a TV shot may be all I get. It was interesting to learn about all the housing that was being built to accommodate the athletes during the games. I also liked learning about what the plans were for all the facilities and buildings after the games. Some buildings will be demolished, but most will remain and be used for other purposes. Below a picture of the outside frame of the main stadium and me.
On Sunday I took Carissa and Allison to the Flower Market, since they had yet to go. It was raining the whole time we were there, but still packed. I got 50 stems of tulips for 10 pounds. I thought this was a great deal, even compared to rates in the States. They were soft, pink beauties and the blossoms had yet to open up. I had to carry them home in a bundle like a baby. One guy on the Tube noticed the tulips and asked if they were for me. I just smiled and said yes, even though I was planning on bringing them up to my Mom and Aunt Karen’s room when they arrived. He asked if I was going to pot them. I said no they are already cut, so I will just plop them in a vase. As soon as I said vase he noticed I was American. He laughed and said that Brits say vase (holding the a sound). I kind of laughed too and told him that older people in the States say that too. He was surprised. It is nice meeting friendly people and getting a little dose of culture.
On Monday evening I treated myself to another musical show. It is kind of silly and hard not to since there are so many at my finger tips. Plus most of the theaters offer great student concessions. Allison, Carissa and I all went to Dirty Dancing, the musical. I had only watched this movie last year on a Volleyball road trip. I immediately loved it and I was really excited to see the musical version. I must say it was hard to live up to the movie, but I really enjoyed the show. It is amazing how stage sets can be created. We had great seats and we were all really glad we went! The rest of my time was consumed with my essays and last minute homework assignments before my Mom and Aunt Karen arrived. It seemed like only a little while ago they were telling me when they were coming and before I knew it they were on there way!
