Less Exciting

So I've been having a more relaxing week so far. Sunday, ALV and I traveled up and down Oxford Street, which was both fun and frustrating. "If you want to look in the store, go INSIDE the store!" as ALV pointed out. Window shopping is not very fruitful when you have thousands of people irritated at you for walking at a snail's pace.

Monday night we went to Avenue Q at Noel Coward Theatre, which was hilarious. But RAUNCHY. Puppet nudity, people! But really, I think it should be a test to see if you're too uptight - if you can't laugh at Avenue Q, you need to loosen up. I knew I'd like it from the very first song - "What Can You Do With a BA in English?" Ah yes, that is the million dollar question, isn't it?

Yesterday was Canada Day! And the only event for which I have pictures!

They played street hockey, while the announcer kept referring to the pavement as "ice" and the ball as a "puck":

Even puppies were Canadian (the man had a pipe and umbrella like a stereotypical Englishman, but I couldn't get a good shot and was too shy to ask):

ALV, before we started whining about the heat and heading home:

And what even I, who dislikes children in general, thought was pretty darn cute:


Today was a little jaunt to Harrod's, which was surprisingly not nearly as crowded as when Jon and I went 2 years ago, despite it being sale time. The sale rather ruined it actually, since the big red cardboard signs removed the luxurious mystery of Harrod's. I swear, it's like a theme park, but the rich people are the only ones that can really enjoy themselves. I'd have pictures but someone else was yelled at for taking pictures in the fine jewelry section and I was already on the no-no list for having a backpack. At least they didn't kick us out for wearing jeans and looking like little scruffy vagabonds.

Lots of Old Stuff and One New Stuff

One of my favorite things in London is the London Eye. Sure, it's expensive, doesn't have student prices and forces you into close proximity with people that you wish understood the meaning of 'personal space', but it's also relaxing and gives you lots of pretty views of London:

(Look! Parliament again!... Also, Westminster.)

St. Paul's in the distance:


Yesterday was the Tower of London, another favorite of mine. You can't take pictures of the Crown Jewels unfortunately, but they look practically fake anyway. Maybe they are...

ALV is scared of the Tower (or my picture-taking... whichever):

The British tell you that the Tower wasn't originally a prison, but I think the guys that had time to do this in their cell walls would disagree:

Okay, now this is, in fact, a bit scary. Bayonets on machine guns! Wtf?:

The Tower Bridge:

The White Tower looking imposing:


Today we went to Bath and Stonehenge, which was a bit on the lighter side. I wish we had gotten more time at both of them (particularly Bath), but it was only a day trip. There were delicious muffins involved at one point though...

The Roman bath with the Bath abbey in the background:

The "Sacred Spring":

Milsolm Street and the reason Brits hate tourists, most likely. (Next to me for this picture was a con artist playing Three-card Monte with some young teenager as her target. People, teach your kids what a confidence trick is!):

Stonehenge's burial mounds, with the Beeker people. I couldn't make that name up:

And we all know what this place looks like, right? Well, it's still pretty cool in person:


On the way back, our bus driver (who had repeatedly run lights and driven like a crazy person) got into a fender bender. Of course, being a bus, it was the other guy's fender. He freaked out on us, even though (shockingly, considering our driver's driving) it was actually his fault. It was kind of fantastically hilarious. Ah, I love this town.

As Promised

So I'm still jetlagged, but I'm rather enjoying my first week here in London. Notre Dame's campus in London is about a 30 minute walk from where ALV and I are staying (at the University of London) and, because we're cheap and London so is not, we take the walk instead of the Tube. The best part of the walk is the last bit, where we have to go through Trafalgar Square. It's like being hit with a sledgehammer of "You're in LONDON, by the way!" and it's fabulous.
Lord Nelson, who is facing away actually:

The National Gallery on the other side, which is full of paintings of the Virgin and Child, to the point that they bleed together. I preferred the Impressionists section - hooray for Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh and Seurat:

And St. Martin in the Fields to one side:

I might have to suck it up and pay a massive fee to go to a concert at St. Martin's, otherwise my orchestra teacher from high school might hunt me down and kill me for not doing so. We'll see. Right now, I'm more excited by the prospect of listening to foul-mouthed puppets in Avenue Q.

We took a bus tour on Sunday, during which I took a lot of pictures that included the tops of people's heads. Today, we went to the London Aquarium between class and a "strawberry and cream" reception (which is apparently some Wimbledon thing - obviously, I know nothing about tennis or its traditions). The aquarium is *gasp* overpriced, but also close to the London Eye and, across the way, my total obsession, Parliament and Big Ben. I did you the favor of not posting the 20 photos I have of Big Ben (and yes, I'm aware that that's the name of the actual bell, not the tower... blah blah blah, hush you).
Let's ignore the fact that I have a better picture of the Eye from a previous trip:

From when I was - in ALV's words - "all up in Big Ben's grill":

A terrible photo of me, but the only one I have so far - and THIS is why:

On Saturday, we're taking a trip to Bath and Stonehenge. And just to prove that I'm a total American tourist, when they called it a "coach trip", I had to think for several minutes before realizing that this didn't involve a team of horses and a carriage.

Check check check

I have successfully arrived in London, which is a huge relief. I'd forgotten how daunting it could be to travel alone and I've never been this far alone before. But everything was pretty much as I remembered, making it a lot easier. My room is the typical college dorm room at University of London and the law program is sharing the hall with people that are clearly younger and louder. When I signed in there weren't a lot of people here yet, but I expect to see more of them in the morning. Today wasn't going to be very social anyway - a baby on the plane kept everyone who didn't have earplugs awake and so I took a "nap" that lasted pretty much all afternoon. And soon, I'm going back to bed in an effort to get set on London time.

While I was on the Underground from the airport, I did see a bunch of people playing cricket in one of the fields (since, despite the name, the Underground isn't always under the ground, especially in the suburbs). It's the first time I've seen anyone actually playing when they weren't in a BBC miniseries about the 1920s.

I hope this will be the first and last London post without pictures. Tomorrow, I'll be a sane person with the right amount of sleep again. :)

Update on Nothing

Alright, so I haven't been exactly prolific with the blogging lately. But I haven't been doing anything that's very interesting - I got my hard drive replaced and then a few days ago, my OS got corrupted. I've been reading a lot, running errands and doing laundry. The computer problems are the excitement in my life these days. Oh, and I'm moving this weekend to... another apartment in the same complex, which means I'm basically picking my stuff up and scooting it 50 yards to the south. Don't ask. Long story.

I will be posting quite often once I get to London though - I've promised several people lots of pictures and detailed goings-on. It's 57 degrees there right now. My heat-addled brain might not be able to take it!

I Kick Butt WIth Dry Bones and the Bullet Bike

Fear not, gentle readers... and even those with just a passing interest - I am alive. My computer's hard drive, however, is not. It failed almost two weeks ago, unfortunately, as the (I hope) last of a wave of Mac hard drive failures BLS students have been experiencing. My time online has been since drastically cut down, since I'm sharing Jon's computer - something that can be quite difficult when said husband is a computer geek who relinquishes control of his desktop with more reluctance than the sorority girl who lives upstairs would have parting with her self-tanner.*

But tomorrow, I get my laptop back with a brand new hard drive and a big lesson learned - namely, back up your files like a maniac when your computer starts doing weird stuff like making the noise of a car blinker. On the plus side, the down time gave me the opportunity to unlock almost everything on Mario Kart Wii (damn you, Rainbow Road on Mirror level - you thwart me at every turn!).

Yeah... I haven't been doing much. But I'm looking at the calendar and realizing that in exactly a month, I'll be jetting off to London for 5 1/2 weeks of international law courses. Clearly, the second half of summer will generate more posts.

*"It's Fake and Bake and I helped!" Seriously people - we're not meant to be orange.

Pure Boasting

*does a little happy dance*

I'm a 3L, people. It's rather unreal. And to add the cherry on top of a delicious sundae of happiness, I'm convinced enough that I passed all of my exams that I can say "I'm a 3L!" without qualifying it with terms such as "maybe".

Sure, I'm exhausted from the distinct lack of sleep I'm currently suffering. And yes, if you've spoken to me in the past week, it's likely I made some rather *odd* remarks that had nothing to do with anything ever. But is it worth it? Yup!

I'm going to go collapse and sleep for like 12 hours now.