Good night for a barbeque...

Today was a really nice day. The wind was not absurd, and the sun was out most of the time. I had class at nine and an extra long myth class at noon. Seriously, they had to make it extra long so two professors could switch off teaching it. The first professor left at 1 to go eat lunch and handed us off to another prof who kept us til two. Of course, the students are all thinking "how come you get a lunch break?". Ok so maybe some of them were thinking about myth. But there were only four of us there... so perhaps not. I wish I hadn't gone to that class since they only discussed stuff from before I was here, which I am not responsible for. Oh well.

After class I did laundry. The dryer failed to live up to its name once more, and so, once more, my room has been turned into a clothing fort. Only this time, I don't have the heat on so my pajamas probably will not be dry when I am ready to go to bed : ( boo.

Took some pictures of some nice trees by the towers that are blooming:



I have no idea what kind of tree it is, but the blossoms look like this:





They are not very fragrant, but they are extremely poofy...

This afternoon I lounged around online, did a bit of reading, the usual hijinks. Around 7 or 8 my flatmates were like "barbeque!" so I was like "ok!". We all went out onto campus where, lo and behold, they have little grills set up. Cool. So we barbequed in the sunset, in honor of manbeast's birthday which was about two weeks ago. Of course it was perfectly nice all day, but no, we waited until it was dark out. It was fun though. I met Lauren and Mike, two of manbeast's friends, who seem pretty cool. Lauren's a creative writing major! Woo!

Some pics from the barbeque by night (I have no clue if i'm spelling barbeque right... bbq?)



Apparantly we have a swan on campus. Scary.



This is Sophie!!



The library and the lake



manbeast - no he's not drunk... at least not very, but i did take him a bit by surprise.



This is my next-door neighbor Phil. Her hair isn't always that color - that's new today.

Manbeast invited me to go out to the castle tomorrow with him and Mike and Lauren, but I think he may have been a little tipsy at the time so we'll see if he remembers. Lauren and I shoved off a little after nine because we were cold. I showered and tried to change into my pajamas before remembering they were wet >.< Argh!

Tomorrow: the castle and who knows what else

Super Awesome Special Three-Day Update Blog, GO!

Ok so, I meant to update on Saturday, but the Internet went out and didn't come back until Monday afternoon. So then I meant to update Monday evening, but I got distracted... So here's a three-day update! I don't expect anything entertaining to happen tonight, so maybe it can count as a four-day update including Tuesday as well.

SATURDAY

Saturday (I just typed that Satyrday... interesting...) Lisa came to visit! Very exciting : ) I met her at the train station and we bought day bus passes and proceeded to explore Colchester. By the way, the one-day passes are completely worth it if you're going too and from University. The passes cost 2.80, and to get from University to town and back again costs 3.60. Lisa brought me tasty American junk food : )

We took the bus to high street and wandered aroung, thinking about lunch. We went to the tourist information building and asked if they could reccomend any restaurants. They reccomended The Lemon Tree. We thought about it, wandered back up High Street, and completely ignored their reccomendation, choosing to eat at a nice little cafe called Roxi. The food there was excellent and pretty reasonably priced too (in pounds anyway... I'm trying not to think of the dollars : P). The waitresses were all super friendly as well. We got some bread and calimari as appetizers, and then both got cottage pie as a meal.

Cottage pie is a sort of casserole dish... kind of... Well, basically it's beef, peas, carrots, and onions all cooked together, then topped with mashed potatoes and covered in cheese and baked. And the portions were huge.

So after lunch we walked around some more. We went to Red Lion Books... actually, it was Red Lion Ooks... and I finally bought a copy of Peter Pan! The books there were slightly cheaper than in London. Also, Red Lion Ooks is right across the street from the Red Lion Hotel! I took some pictures.



That's the hotel. It's got shops underneath it - a chocolate shop and something else. The dark archway people are standing in has the entrance to these shops, and the entrance to the hotel further back.



This is what you see when you walk in. A staircase right away - hope you're packing light.



This is looking up from on the stairs. The ceiling is a big skylight so the stairwell is pretty bright. didn't go into the reception area and didn't see any rooms. The construction looks pretty rustic, but also in good shape from what I saw. The carpeting on the stairs may be an unfortunate color choice, but at least it's not too ragged : P I didn't see a carpark anywhere nearby, but it is possible I missed it.

Next Lisa and I explored Castle Park. We sat on Roman foundations under a bridge and watched kids try to climb the castle walls. There was some kind of small agricultural fair going on. There was a horse. We xplored pretty much the whole park - it's huge. It has a lovely lake and a river. We got ice cream even though it was a bit chilly, and wandered all over the place.



Pretty flowers



I think this is technically no longer Castle Park, but it was still very pretty.

After that we caught a bus back to the University and I showed her around the campus. Then it started raining so we hid out in my room and ate Doritos and talked. Lisa colored a picture and shared stories. It was good times : )

I took the bus with her back to the North Station and we parted ways. When I got back to the room I sat down to blog, only to find the internet missing. Sigh. So, I finished doing my research for the Metamorphosis paper and then proceeded to attempt to beat my high score in pinball. It didn't work. In fact it was sort of pathetic.

SUNDAY

Happy belated birthday Grandma! It would have been on time had I had Internet : P

Sunday I got up and went to Mass. Had lunch (I'm slowly but surely eliminating the perishables). The Internet still wasn't back, so I wrote the Metamorphosis paper, so that's done! No more papers! Some revising yet, but the hard part is finished. Then I beat my second highest score on pinball... but my high is 7 million... probably won't be beating that any time soon.

Archery Sunday evening was the first annual super awesome Easter extravaganza : P We pinned balloons to the targets - three types, confetti-filled, pearly normal ones, and animal shaped - and shot at them. There was a pinata pinned to one of the targets, but as it turns out, arrows are not the best way to break a pinata. There were also enormous chocolate eggs at the center of each target. I took it upon myself to only shoot at animal shaped targets, and I popped a lot of them. I was having a really good night for shooting : P I also shot one of the center eggs. Thing completely shattered. It was awesome. At the end of the night we simply tore the pinata open and went on to top bar to hand out prizes : P I won the prize for most animals slain, as well as the nickname The Huntress, which is the best nickname I've ever had : ) Prizes were five-inch plastic trophies. I plan to keep toothpicks in mine.

Here are some pics of the enormous egg I shattered:




Watch shown for size comparison : P It was delicious.

After top bar I found an open computer lab and posted the blog about the Internet being down. Before archery I had stopped by the library to pick up a movie to keep me occupied that night - Troy. I forgive its tragic inaccuracy for its violence and attractive cast : ) I watched it with my tub of ice cream, and it was good.

MONDAY

The Internet was back Monday! I signed on and went to class. After Versions of Modernity lecture, I stopped by the Information Desk to ask where the best place to catch the bus to Stansted is. Then I went by the Lit Office to see if any more of my essays had been graded - and got my Early Modern Culture essay back! I got a 70!! That's a "first"! That's freaking awesome. Of course now he's going to expect my next paper to be just as good... and I'm not sure that it is. I certainly had trouble finding sources for it. Well, we shall see. I'm just glad it's done, honestly...

Got back to the tower and had lunch. By the time I was done with lunch, the Internet was crippled and barely running. Then it went away again, so I took a nap. When I woke up, it was back on and running smoothly! Hurray! Hopefully it is for good this time.

Around 4, Vicki came to get me to make a trip to Tesco. We went with her friends Nora and Lucy, who are fun people. Turns out, Vicki has a car! So we didn't walk : P That was awesome. I bought some milk for hot chocolate and bread. I mean I also bought bread. Not that I bought milk for bread. Because really, bread does not require milk.

Sadly I didn't need anything heavy while I had the advantage of a car. Vicki invited me to a party on flat 4 on Thursday. It's partly a general party, partly a birthday party for Vicki since her birthday is in April and no one will be around. I plan to go - it's at 8, so the archery meeting will be over - but only for a short while since I'll need some sleep, and I anticipate much smoking and drinking anyway.

So I chilled in the room doing random stuff for a while until i got hungry around 8 or 9 for dinner. While I was cooking some pasta, Vicki came in for dinner too, so we ate together and ended up talking until like, 11. Manbeast came in around then completely trashed, followed shortly by Mark or Mike... he lives on my flat and i can't remember his name... The last time I saw someone moving like manbeast was moving, he was promptly sick all over the place, so Vicki and I told manbeast to get to bed. He mumbled something incoherent and Mike, or possibly Mark, led him off in a daze. It was pretty disgusting. I don't get this whole getting drunk thing...

Well anyway, then Vicki and I were like "time to get out of the kitchen". After all, it was St. Patrick's day. So we went back to our rooms. I started talking to Kai and next thing I knew it was 3 AM. But before three AM happened... return of the mysterious thumps! Only this time they were annoying thumps around 2 AM. I'm glad I wasn't sleeping because really they were more like crashes. I think it was the guy below me opening his window, shouting out into the night, then slamming it closed. Repeatedly. Whatever.

So I went to bed around 3, a little after since I stayed up reading Dorian Gray for a bit.

TUESDAY

I woke up around ten this morning of my own accord. It was odd - normally I sleep til about 11:30 on Tuesdays. But it smelled like Summer in my room - like how the house smells when it's finally warm enough to open the windows and you leave the lights off because the sunlight is enough. Like how it smells in the upstairs when it gets warm, before dad puts the window unit in. So I got up. And it was cold. What the heck. I was very disappointed.

I did my morning stuff, read some webcomics... and discovered I had nothing left to do. So I took a walk. It was cold outside, too. When I came back I finally blogged!

Further plans for the evening include: Shower, revising a paper. Possibly a nap.

The end.

Package of Amazing!

It is Melanie's birthday today! She is 21! They grow up so fast... Happy birthday Melanie! Wish I could be there to celebrate with you : )

So I woke up today around 11:30. The plan was to go to campus and hand in my paper, ask about travelcards at the post office, get lunch, and go grocery shopping. After checking my email, the plan became hand in the paper, ask about travel cards, pick up a package!!!!!!!, get lunch, and go grocery shopping.

So I got to campus at exactly the wrong time when everywhere but the post office was closed for lunch. So I went to the post office and the only questions they answered were that no, they didn't sell travelcards there so no, they couldn't help me. So I got lunch and went back to the room and messed around online until 1:30 when everyone would come back from lunch. Found out that the prompts for the Modernity essay are STILL not posted so basically I'm just wasting these two free days. Anyway, back to campus.

Picked up the package at the post office which was rather larger than I had been expecitng : ) I took it upstairs to turn in my essay and then went back to the tower to see what in the world was making the thing so heavy. Turns out the sheer weight of awesomeness was what did it. Kai and Steph were good enough to include a list of contents so I know I won't leave anything out. First off, they included some colored pictures, as well as a chibi adventure, which have brightened up my room considerably. I was just recently bemoaning my lack of posters to relieve the prison cell atmosphere. They also included two coloring books and a big box of crayons, so guess what I'll be doing until they post those essays!!

Food items included the largest bag of jellybellys I have ever seen with lots of cherry : ) yummm. Also, a box of koala yummies which are hard to find even in the states and certainly don't exist here, a box of pocky because it's awesome, laffy taffy, jolly ranchers, reese cups, gum, and starbursts. Either I'm coming home fat or with extra candy : P More likely the former. Oh, also Peeps to get me in the easter mood!! Non-candy food was Ramen, which they do not have out here - they have similar products but let's face it, Ramen is Ramen. They sent chopsticks with the Ramen so the two Asian exchange students in the flat can make fun of me : P Also, instant microwave rice, fruit roll ups, and cherry tea. The tea is my favorite brand that I only just discovered here - a brand called Twinings. Kai says you can only find it in Disney World in the states. Phoo. Can't wait to try the cherry though. Oh, and they included hot chocolate too, which is good becuase the stuff i took pictures of wasn't so great. Oh, and most thrillingly, they also included a can of campbells soup. I can't wait to eat that. The soup here is just not as good.

In miscellany, one pirate duck and one dinosaur which, as reccomended, became a ninja. I made it a mask to commemorate the occasion. The pirate duck's name is Arrrrgo and the ninja dinosaur's name is was going to be Davey but then I remembered that he's a ninja... oh what to do... so I named it Javey : ) I made Arrrrgo a ship since I made Javey a mask, and now I have a lovely pirate-ninja war going on in my room : )



Unsuspecting pirate duck.....



....suspects nothing...



Death from above!



Arrrrgo is ignorant of his plight!

Yeah... I didn't go grocery shopping today : P With all that food I probably won't need to until I get back from break! And anyway, it started snow/raining and got cold so I stayed inside and gave my room a good cleaning. Then I colored a picture from the Disney Princess coloring book! Yay!



Ok, it's not my fault they drew Ariel looking slightly hungry. Why yes, the caption DOES say "nom nom nom". And yes, those ARE fangs. : )

Let's see... in other news... i want another cornish pasty. The end.

late late late

Ok so technically it's Sunday, but here's the blog for Saturday.

I woke up, did some more research (eeew) and had some soup for lunch. Then I went to Tesco for a few things I was suddenly out of - paper towels, soup, noodly thingies....



...gummy bears...



...hot chocolate...

Heh... ok... those of you who have eaten with me in the dining courts probably can predict what's next...



bwa ha ha! melllllt my pretties! melllllllllt!

ehem.

Really though, locating gummy bears and hot chocolate on the same day, where there were none before? It was destiny.

Right, so I got back from Tesco and sat down to work on my paper some more and ended up taking a three hour nap instead. I woke up around 6 or something... yeah.... So I buckled down and finished the paper by midnight! Woo! Then I realized I hadn't eaten, so I did that, and then played with my gummy bears a bit... and now I am here, and i am wide awake. Good thing I don't have anywhere to be until noon tomorrow!

Experience an earthquake... check

So, last night, I'm talking to Steph around 1, 1:30 and the tower starts shaking. I was marginally freaked out, but I thought that the wind was just so strong that the tower was swaying, you know, how sky scrapers do. This morning I get up and in the news find out that it was, in fact, the shockwaves from the biggest earthquake to have struck Britain since 1984. Now, granted, that's not really such a large earthquake on a global scale, but earthquakes are pretty rare in Britain. I read it was between 4.5 and 5.3... whatever that means : P

So, for real Wednesday morning - when I woke up, instead of when I was still awake - I got a letter from Grandma, which was nice. Class wasn't til two so I sort of killed time until then doing various frivolous things... class went by pretty quick, and at the end of class the prof announced that we wouldn't have class next week! That means I get Tuesday AND Wednesday free! Maybe I'll finish an extra paper early (more likely I'll slack off...) Either way, it's good news.

After class, it was so nice out I decided to go around campus and take pictures of Springtime, as per Mom's request. Here's the prettiness of campus:



A daisy. Essex has more of these than of dandelions.



Some sort of pretty purple undergrowth stuff...



A close-up of the purple undergrowth



Daffodils! These things are all over the place.



I don't know what this is. It was hanging out with the daffodils : )



A shot to try to show some of the hilliness of campus...

These next few pics are from the fifth floor of the library.








This is Wivenhoe House, a big expensive hotel. The second pic is without zoom.



The North Houses



I walk past this place every time I go to or from campus. It's always got great light and shadow, and when it's foggy, it looks like maybe you could be in the middle of a forest.

And then I went back up to my room to do tons of school reading. Happily, I am done for the rest of the week now and can spend the rest of the night doing... something else : P

The end.

fun new ways to put off school work...

Only one lecture today. I woke up got ready, and left. Lecture was all right, not bad, nothing special. Afterward, I bought a stapler.

Then I went to see Hazel to hand in my essays, and she answered all of my questions before I even asked them! She had apparantly been trying to call me to let me know that my online submission was all right, too. Basically, she's amazing and should be in charge of the whole university.

I went back to the room and did a little reading for Thursday, which resulted in a lovely nap. There were still a few hours of daylight left when I woke up, and it was a nice day, so I thought I'd go for a walk and get some pictures I've been meaning to get for quite a while.



This is a sign on the door at Tesco. Poor door.



At the Library, though these can also be found near most of the computers in the labs. Every time I walk by the library computers, though, there are less mouse mats...

Anyway, I also paid off the rest of my accomodation fees. My goodness it's a lot of money... I then went back to the room and proceeded to waste time reading comics and not doing any writing or "productive" reading at all.

Oh, another interesting tidbit. In the computer labs, there are diskette dispensers. You put in coins and get diskettes. I sort of chuckled in a "how cute" sort of way. Then I looked at the computer I was using. Yes, it has a diskette drive, and a cd drive... but I couldn't find USB ports anywhere O.O It MUST have them. They can't be that old. I must go back and preform a more comprehensive check.

Now: frivolous reading.

Later: video chat

Tomorrow: who knows!

post for the whole weekend!

I didn't update last night because I didn't feel like doing anything after I got back from London. So here is a post for both yesterday and today!

Saturday morning I woke up around 8:45 to catch a bus to catch a train to London. There was blood all over the bathroom. Not asking. I left for the bus and startled a vicious looking mommy duck on my way... the entire campus was freaking erupting into springtime. There were yellow daffoldils everywhere, birds chirping, dozens of squirrels chasing each other, and even a bumblebee despite the chilliness. Absurdity.

I was way early for the bus, so I waited for a bit. Luckily, being early meant that the rest of the traffic wasn't out yet, so the bus to the station went pretty quick. I got to the station and asked a random woman if she was going to London. She said yes, so I got onto the train she got on to. The trains are nice. We're not talking South Shore here. Anyway, I was right on time for a train. It was pretty packed, so I sat down next to a girl about my age. When the train started, she called her boyfriend and proceeded to have one of the most inane conversations I've ever eavesdropped on : P I brought my DS, so I spent the train ride getting acquainted with the new Super Mario Bros. The train ride seemed really short. We arrived at Liverpool St. Station around 10:52.



Here's Liverpool Station! It's biiiig. It's filled with American chains - Starbucks, Burger King, and all of that. Lisa met me here, and we decided to go see some museums. We got on the Underground to go to the Victoria and Albert museum. The Underground is really easy to ride and not confusing at all, but very crowded.

When we got off the train, we decided we wanted lunch, and lo - as we left the station a cafe with all kinds of delicious looking things in the window presented itself. I got a Cornish pastry. Yummmm. Then we headed to the museum.

These are pictures of the museum. It's huge. It's basically where Britain put all the souveneirs it took from the countries it invaded, plus some British stuff for variety. We got through a sculpture room, Japan, China, Renaissance, tons of silver oddments, and the gift shop before having to leave to catch the show.

I did not take pictures of Phantom : P I mean really. But the show was amazing - and the Phantom was the most amazing! They definitely should have gotten him instead of Gerard Butler : P The show is much more intense live than on screen. Altogether, a great experience.

We weren't sure what to do when the show let out since we weren't hungry yet, so we wandered through Trafalgar Square, which looks much different when it's not filled with more people than it can hold, and along the Thames

Here's a picture taken from Trafalgar Square... just a general London looking scene, and a chance to use the "night scenery" mode on my camera : P

The London Eye all lit up at night.

The London Eye, me, and Big Ben waaaaaaaaaay in the back.

I must have taken ten pics of Big Ben, but most of them turned out blurry...

Anyway, walking around the Thames was really nice. There were hot dog and roasted nut vendors all over the place. It smelled like Comisky, which made Lisa and me hungry enough to go in search of food. We ended up at a little cafe where I got a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. Then, we headed back to the Underground and parted ways.

Getting back to Liverpool Station was easy. When I arrived, I saw there was a train leaving for Colchester in about ten minutes, so I hopped aboard and settled in with my DS. I swear the ride seemed like it only took ten minutes, but I was distracted. When we arrived in Colchester, there was a bus waiting to go back to university, which was nice : ) I got back to the dorm around 10 and signed on to see Steph befre she left for turnabout. I got to talk to my mom and dad for a pretty long time - voice chat is awesome. I went to bed pretty early though because I was exhausted.

This morning I woke up, did some low-thought morning activities, and went to church. Then I came back to give my essays one more look over before submitting them to the online work database. Once I finished that, I went and printed copies and filled out the forms needed to hand them in on Tuesday. It's an awful lot of bother just to turn in a paper. Then I tried to pay off the rest of my fees online, but for some reason, could not. I must locate the place to pay in person.

Neither Pete nor Bashar showed up for archery tonight, so I spent the session listening to manbeast babble on about the novel he's never going to write. There have been better sessions.

And now, I am here.

The end.

Friday... finally

Ah it is Friday and the period of silence has already begun : )

This morning was my new early Versions of Modernity seminar. There were only two other students besides myself in the class... apparantly 9 AM classes here are like 7:30s at Purdue. Ha, wusses! Anyway, the teacher's name is Antonella, and she is Italian. She is very enthusiastic about literature. Actually, I think I will do better in this section than in the other. Clare's a great teacher, but her approach to literature is rather scientific, compared to Antonella's more emotion-based approach. At any rate, I made a good impression I think with The Waste Land today, and have emailed to set up an appointment to discuss my paper, and I already have the books I need. The down side is that this class has not yet posted the second paper prompt and I am beginning to suspect that they will not post it until break, which would be EVIL. But that is not Antonella's fault...

I tried to nap for the forty-five minutes between classes, but my throat had other things to say, so I read webcomics instead. Myth class was all right, but I don't think the prof's heart was really in it today. Next seminar will be taught by the new prof, and she's already assigned a presentation, of which I am somewhat resentful given that I have never met the woman. Also might have to buy new books for that class. I'll find out next Friday.

Thanks to the new Myth assignment, I now have two presentations and a research paper to do this weekend, so I'm thinking I probably won't make both days of archery. That's all right, I'd rather get the work out of the way.

I hurt the roof of my mouth biting into a very hard Special K bar this morning. Owch. Thing shattered when I bit it... I think that is not supposed to happen.

So, in conclusion,




The end.

(image stolen from www.icanhascheezburger.com)

oh there's no place like London...

London trip today! I woke up this morning at 8 feeling not too terribly tired despite the best efforts of my flatmates to not let anyone get any sleep at all before 4 in the morning. I put all my stuff together and went to catch the bus for London.

It was a long drive - took two hours to get to our drop off point. They played The Devil Wears Prada on the way. I was able to follow the gist of it but I'm afraid I missed the more subtle nuances... and I'm ok with that. When we finally got there, the bus dropped us off in front of a nondescript wall. No landmarks or anything nearby to let us know where we were... so I asked, and we were at Hay Market, and if we wanted they would show us how to get to Chinatown. Thinking that would be a more well-known place for Lisa to meet me, I went along and texted her. Turns out she knew where Hay Market was too : P In fact, that's where we'll be seeing Phantom in two weeks! Anyway, Lisa found me with no trouble and we began wandering about Chinatown. But it was really crowded and we couldn't see anything, though we could hear a parade. The place looked neat:



This is Chinatown all decorated for Chinese New Year!

But we moved on pretty quickly. There were supposed to be some interesting things happening in Trafalgar Square, so we went on that way. The square was even more crowded than Chinatown, though - approaching German Christmas Village levels. We went into the National Portrait Gallery instead and amused ourselves by making up stories for the people in the painting - the ones that didn't already have stories, that is.



This is one of my favorite paintings from the gallery, but it's hard to tell why from this image...



This is the upper right hand corner of the painting blown up. Even here it's hard to really see the maniacal glint in the cat's eye... trust me, it's really funny.

Anyway, from there we headed out for some lunch, and then to Piccadilly Circus:



It's basically Times Square, London, complete with McDonald's advertisments.



And it's got a fountain with huge horses.

We saw some odd telephone booths - they were black instead of red!!



Lisa decided that the phone booths were angry. I decided that they were sad.



Here are some normal, cheerful red ones!!

Next we went through Green Park. Very creative name... pretty accurate too.

This is a circle of trees in Green Park. I call it the Giant Ring.

Just through Green Park is Buckingam Palace! Or, as I like to call it, Buckingham Building-that-doesn't-look-like-a-castle.

These are the gates. Very impressive.

This is a guard. What happened to the red uniforms and big fuzzy hats? Possibly the same thing that happened to those black telephone booths!! O.O

Here's a shot of the facade between the bars of the gate.

And one taken from a distance.




You can see the Eye of London from the square in front of Buckingham Palace... physically, it's bigger than Sauron's, though not quite as scary.

This is a really tall monument to Queen Victoria in the square in front of Buckingham. This picture was me standing at the base and looking up. She's enormous.

The monument from a more reasonable distance

Here's me in front of a random weird looking statue. Lisa and I sat here for a while to rest.

Then we moved on, heading for Hyde Park.

This is a random arch on the way to Hyde Park. It is NOT Marble Arch, but if it was I'd have an interesting story to relate, thanks to Lisa. Marble Arch, which this is not, was built as an entryway to someplace for some kind of duke. But when it was built, the Duke's carriage was too big to fit through the arch. So they picked up the Marble Arch, put it down randomly somewhere else, and built the Duke's obese carriage a bigger arch. I saw Marble Arch... that carriage must have been HUGE.

Look, they put helpful signs in the street for us poor tourists who have no idea where to look so we don't get hit by a car.

Here is the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens! We had to wait a while for a bunch of dopey people to stop climbing all over it, but we finally got a clear shot : ) While we waited, we watched some pretty amusing birds jump on each other... birds look funny when they pop back up from underwater like corks.

Here is me with Peter ^.^ I almost bought a copy of Peter Pan today to keep with my tradition of buying a copy from every country I'm in, but books are SO expensive here, I couldn't bring myself to do it just yet. Maybe when I have more pounds on my Waterstone's card.

The plaque in front of the statue. You can't really read it, but it says who sculpted the statue, and talks a bit about James Barrie.

This is a squirrel talking to a fairy on the back of the statue!! : )

We finished up looking around Kensington Gardens, and decided to catch a bus back to the Hay Market area because we were tired from all that walking! We decided to take the bus to Oxford square, and it turned out to be a bus painted entirely black with Phantom of the Opera adverts all over it! Neat! We rode the bus up Oxford street, and therefore got to see all the shops from a nice safe distance from all the people. There are many retail stores and lots of familiar brand names... Anyway, we got off pretty close to Hay Market, with about an hour and a half to kill before my bus came. So we went into a Caffe Nero and got tea and hot chocolate and sat and talked for the remainder of the time.

Look, a pic of the two of us together! : ) I'm bad at centering...

Then the bus came, and Lisa and I parted ways, but we will see each other again in two weeks.

On the ride back, they played a movie which I think was called The Perfect Man, but which only held my interest because I couldn't see anything out of the windows... when the bus dropped us off, there was thick thick fog. I couldn't even see the tops of the Towers. I went and got a panini because I was too tired to cook and I wanted something hot. I was planning on getting tea too, because my throat really hurts, but the shop was already closed. Ah well. Food and a hot shower made a big difference...

And that was my adventure for today! Tomorrow... class... wheeee