I kept meaning to write a post the past few days, but I had a paper due today that was a little more pressing. But that’s out of the way now, so I have time to catch up on what I’ve been doing. Tuesday wasn’t a very exciting day, since I just had two lectures, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We did have a BBQ here at Clayhill, the place I’m staying for the month. We got to talk to some British students, which was interesting, being able to hear about what school was like for them and their perspectives on America. After that, I pretty much worked on my paper until bed. It’s so hard to motivate myself to do schoolwork here. It just seems strange!
Anyway, Wednesday we ventured into London and visited the British Museum. So many artifacts! It would probably take you forever to look at every single thing in that museum. The things of note that we saw were the Rosetta Stone, a statue from Easter Island, and a lot of Greek and Roman statues. By the end, everything kind of started to look the same. As we left the museum, we ended up stopping at a little restaurant by the museum that served afternoon tea. It was kind of like eating lunch! We had tea (obviously) and it came with four finger sandwiches (a tuna, a cheese, a salmon, and an egg salad one), a scone with cream (which was kind of like a light butter) and jam, and a piece of cake (we had chocolate chip cheesecake). It was absolutely delicious! We then made our way back to Surbiton, stopping at the store for food and such. I then did some laundry, before going to attend the film night that was happening on campus. It was comedy night, so we watched Life of Brian which was…interesting. British humor is interesting.
Thursday was another long day. For class, we had a Globe Tour at noon, so we went into London for that. It was interesting, and the exhibition there had a lot of information about what theater was like at the time Shakespeare lived there. Then we had the whole afternoon to ourselves, since we didn’t have to be back at the Globe until 7:30 to see Henry V. So we walked over to St. Paul’s, grabbing a delicious snack. Then we took the tube over to St. Pancras in order to visit the official London 2012 shop there. Everything was so expensive in the store! But I got a few things, then we headed back to Borough Market, where we stumbled upon a stand with Turkish delight. It is delicious! It’s kind of hard to explain exactly what Turkish delight is, but I did enjoy it. After that, we grabbed some coffee at the Globe, waiting to be let into the theater. Of course, it started raining as we were waiting in line, and didn’t stop the whole time we watched the play. The performance was really, really good, but being wet the whole time wasn’t all that fun. I was soaked and exhausted by the time I got back, but the play was definitely worth it.
Today we got up and headed back into London, planning on doing a day of museums. We started out at the Science Museum, which was interesting. They had a whole space section that was pretty much just dedicated to NASA. Then we headed over to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is huge! There is so much stuff in there, it would take someone days to see everything in it. We looked around mostly at the stuff from Britain, and ventured into the garden to get some caffeine. In the garden, there were these chairs that were basically like spinning tops, they were so strange to sit in! Rejuvenated from our little break, we finished looking at the British stuff in the museum, then headed on over to the Natural History Museum, which is just as big! There were a lot of fossils and stuff in there, which were interesting to look at. We hit the exhibits we wanted to see, then walked over to the Royal Albert Hall, which is a beautiful building. Brains full from all the information we had absorbed, we made our way back to Surbiton, and made plans to go to a pub later for dinner. This weekend should be fun, with a trip to Brighton tomorrow, then Hampton Court on Sunday. I don’t think I’ll have a day of relaxation until I get home, but I’m definitely okay with that! There’s just so much to do and see here, and there’s no way I’ll see it all before I leave. Anyway, until next time, happy reading! 🙂