So we were up early for the train. No breakfast, no time for anything. We were off to the subway. Got on one, headed to our stop. Then we noticed Dani was nowhere to be found in transition between that train and another one to another line, don’t know when or how she got lost, but in the subways and when we have to make a train- tough luck really. Got on our second subway train headed to the train station. Unfortunately this train was having technical problems and was taking entirely too long so we randomly ditched it to find a faster one on a different line. Got to that train and noticed Abbie was nowhere to be found. That’s two. We had more hope for Abbie finding our train because we know she knew what station we were going to and had an itinerary with her. Regardless, we moved on because we were cutting it incredibly close. Armon stayed back to look for Abbie once we were at the train station while the rest of us ventured on to find our platform. After finally finding it and running onto the train around 9:02am (the train was to leave at 9:10am) we sat and waiting. Eventually around 9:12am they announced that the 9:10 train was cancelled and was now also the 9:35am train. This was good news for me because I was starving, and we had 25 minutes until departure, so I got tea and a pain au chocolat ^_^ We got back on the train and started moving leaving Dani and Abbie behind. Armon apparently got a call from Abbie’s mom- I guess when she got lost the first thing she did was cry and call her mom, which would have helped the situation a lot. Ha. As Armon was on the phone with Abbie’s mom we heard yelling or something then Abbie magically appeared in our train car. Apparently some nice lady saw her sobbing hysterically, offered her her phone to call someone, and helped her get to the train she needed, and after getting to the train she found out that it was now the 935 train, and risked getting on it and taking a chance. A woman, after hearing her story, suggested she walk the train and look for us. And that’s when she ran into Armon who had exclaimed ‘SHE’S RIGHT THERE!!!!’ to Abbie’s mom on the phone which is the yelling we heard. What a great morning. Moral of the story: learn to keep up. Hopefully those two get it now haha. When we need to make a train, we need to make a train, so hopefully now some of us understand a sense of urgency. Two hours and 20 minutes later we arrived at our destination, and headed out to find the National Medium Museum. Here we wandered around a bit at first waiting for a curator to take us back to the collection and what not (we had specially arranged that or something). After waiting for about an hour (which sucked because we were all without lunch and tired) we finally found the person who was showing us around. She took us and showed us the entire archives of some British newspaper, then showed us a small objects collection room that had walls of cases enclosing tons of old cameras and things and even gaming systems which they had recently begun collecting. Very cool. She then showed us the Large objects collection room which just had a ton of old tvs and video cameras and such. After that she took us to a room with photographs she had pulled out specifically for us. This is where we saw some original work by Julia Margaret Cameron (who’s museum we’ll be visiting eventually on the trip) i.e. her photograph ‘Sir John Herschel’, one I particularly like. We also got to see some of Talbot’s original work (the one who invented the negative and lived at the Lacock Abbey) like his infamous photo ‘Open Door’. Pretty stinkin cool. There was a mysterious black box that was all sealed and tied up sitting on the table. We asked what it was and apparently it contain the first ever negative. I touched the box. Haha pretty awesome. That was fun to see all of those things and to be in the presence of the beginnings of photography was pretty fun. We moved onto another room where we saw a few other famous photographs in the history of photography, i.e. ‘Fading Away’, and this room also had original props and such from movies- I saw Frankenstein’s eyeballs. That was neat. After she showed us everything they’d prepared, we went down and ate at the museum café, and then were free to tour the museum ourselves which is really a museum of motion pictures and movies and cienema. They also started collecting video games, which I mentioned. They had a video / arcade game station for people to play in. I played a game of Galixian specifically for my dad, got a photo too. There were other classics like centipede, pac man, donkey kong, frogger, etc. They had actually gaming systems set up too. A sega, where I played a few games of Sonic, a Super Nintendo where I played a few games of the original Mario Kart, an n64 where they had goldeneye 007, and they even had Pong. I played Pong, it was so boring hahahah. But it was cool to actually play the game that started everything. I loved the whole video game experience because one thing I miss a lot is playing video games. Haha.
On the train ride back I read more of my book, Carrie, which I love. We went out to a nice dinner, another Italian restaurant that was SO GOOD. I had the most incredible bruschetta in the entire world. After that I hit up the ATM and Market to buy some pistachios and chocolate. I came back and was by myself for a bit, which I loved. I found the Exorcism of Emily Rose on tv, one of my faves, and got to see a bit of it, then I found the Illusionist on another channel, not a favorite, but entertaining nonetheless. I sat and watched movies and had tea, and a bit after that we got the internet to share and after waiting for everyone else to use the computer I go to skype my mom, dad, and PANTS (our cat, Strider, who is nicknamed ‘Pants’) for the first time in a few weeks!! I even eventually got to skype Zach for a few minutes, which was really really awesome. And afterwards I was told ‘you get all giggly when you talk to your boyfriend’ and I said yup.
My favorite words to hear English people say, and I hear these often, are ‘Cheers!’ and ‘Smashing!’ I mean I’ve heard that stuff in the movies, but I never knew that they actually said things like that here. It’s hilarious / awesome. Also, London weather is interesting weather. I like Kansas weather more (never thought I’d say that) It’s all way overcast, and seems to always be sprinkling. Whenever there’s any sun, it’s just a quick glimpse through the clouds maybe after a bit of a more normal steady rain. It’s kind of chilly here, which is one thing I love. I can’t imagine how hot it’s been back home. Ugh. Friday and Saturday we’re all signed up to do these Ghost Tours of London, which I’m quite excited for. Other than that tomorrow and Friday are free days. I’ll probably be tagging along and what not like normal.
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