I am the Hercules of jet lag. Okay, that's a lie. I am the Neville Longbottom from the beginning of the series, of jet lag. I tried to put on a brave face, but it kicked my trash. All I wanted was to curl up on the nearest floor, but my professors had other ideas. They decided we needed to hit the ground running. I don't like running. We were checked in, handed an electronic hearing device (more on that later), given bedding, assigned a room, and, the best and most stressful part, handed a large amount of cash. As soon as the majority of us had arrived we took off. Straight to Buckingham Palace!!!
But then we realized it was dark outside and the flash made the pictures terrible.
So don't judge the pictures they are the best my collogues and I could do with the lighting and the buses.
And we saw Parliament and the iconic double decker buses.
Then we rode one of those buses to St. Paul's cathedral to go to a meeting called Evensong, which is basically Sacrament meeting all done by a choir every night from 18:00-18:45 (yes that's military time, I'm educated.) Not only do I have to learn a new time scale and find out what room temperature is in centigrade, I also have to learn which way to look before crossing the street. Luckily the Londoners have been considerate of us poor foreign souls and remind us as we step off every sidewalk.
We ended our day at a fancy British eatery, Pizza Hut.At the end of the road our beautiful London Centre (which I will take pictures of and show you one day) is on, is the Russian Embassy. I figure that of all the places in London that Americans aren't welcome, that is like the top 1, 2, AND 3. Unless I was a whistle blower.
Yesterday we went to the British Museum and learned some stuff I never knew before, and some I have never wanted to know. Like about the life-like aspects of Assyrian art and that one of the Pharaoh(ess?) was a female and in order to show she was a divinely chosen pharaoh she had to wear a fake beard. Useful life knowledge right there up next to how to file taxes. Speaking of taxes, parents if you could get on doing that for me, I emailed you the W2 and everything.
We saw the Elgin Marbles which were brought to the UK after they stole them from Greece. Like all the other art they have here. Seriously, ninety percent of the art here, was not made here. It was abducted and smuggled out in the middle of the night by bratty Kings and snotty Dukes. My Professor Martha literally told me one of England’s major contributions to art was collecting it. Anyway during the 2002 Olympics Greece built a whole new museum with, you guessed it, places to hold the Elgin Marbles. With places and everything to let the British know they were ready to properly house them and bring them home. As you can tell from the picture, that didn't go down the way Greece wanted it to.
They were the decorative parts of the Parthenon before they were carted off to the Isles.
Then we went to see Trafalgar Square. Real famous place I didn't take a picture of... oops.
The best part was we spent an hour looking for the bus to take us to the Tower of London and less than five minutes there.
On the way though Martha was giving us information about British History through these little black receivers we plug headphones into. Basically they told us not to be susceptible tourists to being pick pocketed by having in our headphones. Then they tell us to put in headphones. Luckily for me though while I was supposed to be listening, I couldn't. The nice old man stationed on the train asking me about our receivers and knew we were listening to our teacher, but proceeded to give me the history of London anyway.
What I learned:
1. The fire of London was on Pudding Street
2. Cannon street was named thusly because before the fire that's where they made cannons.
What I didn't learn but was supposed to:
1. Something about a King James
2. I have no idea there was a man talking to me.
That night we had pea soup for dinner. And I found out I do not like pea soup. After the pea soup debacle I got a SIM card for my phone so now I can use the interweb out in the city.
That covers the first to days. I am tired and will post about today and tomorrow at a later date.
Cheerio,
Kemarie (the jet lagged one)
P.S. I will try to do better with the picture thing so it isn't all massive text blocks.
P.P.S. If you can guess where the title comes from you win a tiny portion of my respect.
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