June 12, Day 21

We had to be up early early early and I hated it. Especially because I slept terribly. Apparently now there are only two girls on the trip who don’t snore, them being myself and another girl who I’m not rooming with. (Don’t worry, I asked to swap rooms to be with Dani, and I’m so excited because this means no more community room for me, and I get peaceful nights, and nights of undisturbed sleep.) We headed out to the subway station at 7:45am to catch our train at 9am. Me with no food, coffee or tea = bad news bears. I was quite grumpy. Once at the train station though we had 15 minutes to find something before we boarded the train. I spotted someone with A Caffe Nero cup and went in the direction from which they came, determined to start the day right with a fabulous latte. I found it within minutes and ordered a vanilla latte and a pain au chocolat. (I was so afraid leaving France that pain au chocolat would be nonexistent everywhere else… I was wrong. For all I know it’s something you can easily find back in the states, I just never discovered it until I went to France.) After a short wait for an incredible latte the barista handed it to me, and I said ‘thank you very much,’ to which he responded ‘yeah, cheers!’ Oh, I love the friendly English people. I got on the train and sat in a different coach from the rest of my group and enjoyed a peaceful trip for an hour and a half, just sitting alone listening to music and playing solitaire on my ipod. (By the way, no one in Europe has an ipod. I think it has something to do with it being a huge American thing and the Europeans want nothing to do with it. Ha.) So we arrived at the harbour, I forget which one, then we took a ferry across the bay, I think it was the atlantic ocean, to the Isle of Wright, where the Julia Margaret Cameron museum / house is located. Once arriving on the island and walking for some time to a bus stop, we took the bus to a different stop, then took another 45 minute bus ride to our final stop. The museum was in a little town called Freshwater I think, and it reminded me a lot of when my family took a trip to Seaside, Florida one summer. Same small town, same sort of look and vibe, but just add on a bunch of pastures and sheep and cows and large hills and white cliffs, and that’s what Freshwater was like. It was a lovely town to say the least, and we ate at an even more lovely little quaint Tea Room located in the Julia Margaret Museum. It reminded me exactly of the British Home Shop that my Mom used to take me to when we lived in Colorado Springs. I had some excellent traditional English tea, an entire pot to myself, some little sandwiches cut in triangles, and then some homemade lemon sponge cake to top it all off. It was a nice way to sit and relax after having spent around 6 hours or something traveling. After lunch we were free to explore the museum / house and outside until we had to be back at the bus stop. It wasn’t that amazing, it was just full of framed re-prints, only one original, and we had actually seen two of Julia Margaret Cameron’s originals back at the National Medium Museum when we also saw originals from Talbot. They had a nice timeline all set up and what not though, plus it was cool to be in the house of the first female photographer who really established herself as an artist and was really able to make a name for herself. After going through the museum and what not and wandering around outside, not to mention playing and running around in the ocean, we got back on the bus and headed back to another bus, then got on the ferry, then the train, then the subway, and were finally back. We didn’t get back until 9:30pm or so, which sucked BIG time because it means that we missed the soccer game (USA vs. England last night by the way if you didn’t know, and also if you didn’t hear it turned out to be a 1-1 tie). We stopped by subway and got sandwiches and went back to the room to eat. Everyone hung out and watched The Italian Job on tv and ate. (Kinda made me miss the boyfriend… he likes that movie, and my parents gave it to him when we went on our annual summer trip to Aspen Colorado last summer.) I spent most of my time typing up these past few blogs in a document so it’d be easy to just transfer them once we got the internet again. After I was done everyone was still in the room, and it was past 11:30pm. I was tired, but couldn’t go to bed. Story of my life. Someone next door even came over and knocked on our door because everyone was being too loud. I’m ecstatic to get out of this room. Nothing against those I’m staying with… I just prefer not to be loud and crazy all the time 24/7. Buh. After some time people eventually began to trickle out and I went to bed, only to be woken up numerous times by those I’m in a room with talking, and both of them snoring. Again. Meh.

June 11, Day 20

Twenty days overseas! That’s crazy. This morning started just like the previous- relaxed chill morning with the same breakfast in the hotel as always. Today was a free day, so anything was game. Me being me, I could care less how I spent my time, and would just tag along with everyone else once they made a decision on what they wanted to do. Most everyone, like me, is entirely indecisive, and no one decided on one thing to do until after noon or so. I just hung out with my ipod and played solitaire and let everyone else do the planning. We left at 1pm to head to the London Eye, a large famous ferris wheel not far from Big Ben himself. On the way there, we stopped at a little noodle bar for lunch. It was so good. I guess I love Chinese food. You never really realize how much you love something until it’s gone. Isn’t that a famous saying or something? Whatever. We ate, and it was great. Then we set off to experience the London Eye. The ticket was entirely overpriced, and I just wanted to see it, not necessarily go up it. (No, not afraid of heights. That’s stupid. As I said, the ticket was way overpriced. Nearly 18 pounds to stand in a ferris wheel for half an hour- ridiculous.) Though, for the sake of not having to stand alone for half an hour in a foreign country, I spend the money and went on the wheel. I took a few photos, even though being up there and the photos I got have nothing to do with my series aim from this trip. After getting off, we had a few hours until we were going to meet everyone else for our Ghost Tour. So we walked around and did nothing. I hated it. When I know I have something to do or somewhere to be, I can’t really enjoy my time unless I know I’m near my destination or have done what I have to do. It’s kind of like having long breaks between classes at school- I can’t enjoy the time, because I know I still have a class later on. Plus I hated everyone stopping every two seconds to all take twenty photos of the exact same thing. Honestly though, that’s what happens when you have a digital camera and are a tourist. We finally made our way to the underground stop we were supposed to meet at, and while waiting above ground, I spotted a coffee shop, so naturally, I had to grab a latte. So I ventured into this little place called Caffe Nero, having been excited by their signs on the doors that said ‘iced summer drinks’. (If I haven’t made it clear before, iced is like shunned in Europe. More so in France than England though, but I still hate it just as much.) I ordered an iced vanilla latte, typical, and the lady told me that if I could go grab one of the premixed vanilla shakes out of the fridge then she could add ice to it. Once she said that, I said ‘okay I’ll have a regular vanilla latte then. A hot one.’ I didn’t want any of that premixed crap- plus by now I’ve learned that Europeans don’t even come close to understanding how to make an iced drink. Not even the European baristas at the starbucks’ scattered around the country. It’s sad. So blah blah long story short I got my latte (and a pain au chocolat) and went to sit back down with everyone outside.

I sat, I sipped, and I sank. It was incredible. The first latte I had had since the morning I left from KCI, and the first true satisfaction with European coffee since I’d been here. I basically found heaven. I felt like I was home again. Actually, their lattes taste just like those made in the small coffee shop in Aspen, Colorado called ink!. So that’s not exactly home, but it’s in the US. Caffe Nero apparently is the best coffee shop chain in Europe, so if you’re heading to Europe soon and want an excellent latte, I highly recommend Caffe Nero. The employees are kind, decently trained, and fairly consistent in their drink making. MMMM!

Enough about coffee, onto our Ghost Tour. Basically what we did was got shown around the streets of London and were shown famous ghost spots and sightings and stories or whatever. It was entertaining to say the least. Our tour guide was a nice man all dressed up and incredibly knowledgeable- he has been doing all of the research for over ten years now I think he said. It was like a historical ghost lesson tour thing. He showed us where a bunch of people were buried and where certain ghosts haunt and why and where certain people were executed and what not. I actually saw the location of where Sir William Wallace was executed, and got a photo in front of his memorial. (I texted my brother about it immediately.) Also, at one point our tour guide was telling a story about how people were burned at the stake in the olden days, and he was telling us about how, and I quote, they put ‘whicker baskets of small, furry, cuddly, kittens’ at the base of the stake to burn too. When he said kittens, I let out a humungous ‘BAHAHAH!!!’, and quickly covered my mouth realizing that no one else was laughing. Everyone turned and gawked at me, to which I responded by quickly saying ‘sorry, that’s not funny..’. Then, my entire group started laughing at me, and a few other from the tour joined, and our tour guide after that could not continue on with his act because he was laughing so much at my reaction. To explain myself, I thought he was setting up a joke and was going to say something like ‘cute small cuddly RATS!’ or something along those lines. So, when he said ‘kittens’ I died laughing. First, because I was expecting a joke and there was no joke and it was funny, and second, because it really is hilarious that they put kittens in a basket at the base of the victim’s stake. I mean, really? Who’s idea was that. It’s like someone though ‘okay how can we make this even more morbid and intense than burning someone alive?’ ‘I dunno, oh wait we can burn a basket of kittens too.’ Come on. The idea of the thought process is hilarious. And, to add to the humor, later on in the tour some guy got pooped on by a pigeon, which is something that out tour guide warned us of. HAHAHAH!!!

After the tour we ate at a delicious pizza place. I got a genius pizza- they cut out the middle and replaced it with a mini salad! It was so good. And I was proud of myself because I ate my meal in an entirely European fashion: I kept my fork and knife each in one hand throughout the entire meal. Yes, that means I ate my pizza with a fork and knife. It was so difficult, but I had to at least try it being in Europe. Europeans are so funny and proper when they eat. They eat French fries with a fork- they spear the fry, then dip it in ketchup or mayonnaise, and then eat it. They also eat hamburgers with a fork and knife. Now I tried this the previous night at the burger restaurant we ate at, but failed miserably and had to give up. I think the Europeans are afraid of touching food or something. I dunno. They’re weird.

When we got back to the hotel I showered and did laundry in the bathtub, quite a fun feat, and watched some of Hot Rod which was on tv! That definitely made me miss home… no one else here has seen Hot Rod, and didn’t really understand the humor. I miss my family and our humor, because we’re da best. The end.



P.S. Something you will indefinitely hear if you come to London: “Mind the gap!” This is what people announce, and even the subway and train robots announce while you step from a platform onto some sort of transportation device. And it is necessary, because there is usually a good 2.5 to 4 inch gap between the two, and if you’re not paying attention, you could easily seriously injure yourself.

June 10, Day 19

Relaxing morning. Breakfast in the hotel. (I got the same as always: croissant, 2 mini blue berry muffins, a box of frosted flakes for later, and went through two cups of tea.) Today was pretty much a free day; technically though, a ‘history lesson day’. Basically we were just going to spend some time after breakfast in a continuation lecture on the history of Photography. So we spent an hour learning about the early documentation in Photography from 1839-1890. Sometimes the history lessons really suck because I took a course last semester entitled ‘History of Photography’, so I generally have already gone over everything that is told to us. I guess reminders and hearing things over and over are what make them stick though, yeah? After our little history lesson, we were free to enjoy the day and do whatever we want. A lot of people wanted to go shopping. That was their focus of the day, and visiting westminster abbey. I had no interest in shopping, mostly because I knew that if I went I’d spend money on things I could just as easily buy for cheaper in the states, so I didn’t go. Plus I didn’t really care to pay money to go to the Westminster abbey.. I still don’t really know what it is other than it’s supposedly pretty. Woopee. So I literally spend all afternoon alone in the hotel room, and let me tell you, it was absolutely splendid. I needed some good solid individual time away from everyone. Fortunately, we had bought 24 hour internet on a computer the previous night, so I was able to completely catch up on the blog, (sorry for posting so much at once… I don’t really know how else to do it), check email, facebook, facebook chat, and was free for a good four hours to skype, but too bad no one else was available. Hah. Also in my time, I finished a book, had loads of tea, pistachios, frosted flakes, and chocolate. It was delightful. Oh- one thing I love about the UK is Mr. Bean. I watched a good hour of Mr. Bean on tv when I was alone and I laughed and laughed. That guy is hilarious. Once everyone got back from shopping and such, (apparently it turned out that they had to pay 12 pounds or so to even enter the abbey so they just stood at its boundaries and took photos), we all set out for dinner, and I tagged along seeing as my lunch consisted of not lunch-type foods (which is actually a typical meal at college for me). Three other and I ate at a place called the Gourmet Burger Kitchen that’s just a block away from our hotel, and it was one of the best burgers I’ve ever had. I’m usually not one to order burgers in places or really want to go to a burger place, but this was delicious. AND, for the first time since I’ve been in Europe, the thought ‘Zach would really like this.’ Crossed my mind for the first time. That’s a pretty big deal. Hahah. After dinner everyone wanted to head back to the hotel and hangout- which I was totally game for. They decided to get a little mini party thing going, and I played some odd card game with them for awhile whilst enjoying some earl grey tea, but after a bit things started to get loud, and a little too obnoxious for my taste; thus, I left to enjoy some time alone in a quiet room journaling before bed.

Overall, it was a nice, relaxing day for me, which is something I really needed and never really noticed how crucial it is that I get some individual time to myself. I like my space. I cannot reiterate that enough. Though I don’t spend much of my free time venturing out onto the streets of London alone, I’m still finding myself to be incredibly independent from the entire group. Being around them, (and nothing against them really), tends to start to stress me out or weird me out or something and I often find myself trying to put distance in between me and everyone else without sacrificing visibility of each other seeing as I’m in London for the first time and would rather not resort to navigating all on my own.
Nonetheless, I was stoked to go to bed in peace. I always read one of the many marked bible verses out of the little New Testament Bible my mom gave me before I left before bed, and the one I read before closing my eyes this night was Psalm 4:8- a perfect way to end a night, especially after having looked forward to a peaceful, quiet sleep. Things have been lining up like that day after day, and it’s been beyond comforting.

June 9, Day 18

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.

June 8, Day 17

Up earlyish and off to breakfast. Two cups of tea to begin the day. I guess I could say something about a traditional English breakfast, which is actually quite revolting and is why I only get the continental breakfast. A regular English breakfast consists of various things like eggs, a muffin or croissant, some slice of bacon ham thing, baked beans and some sort of blood sausage link thing. Oh and tea of course. So every morning I always get one croissant, two mini blueberry muffins, a box of frosted flakes to eat later, and go through generally two cups of tea. I keep it simple and American I guess. Haha. Today’s destination was the Nation Gallery and National Portrait Gallery. Museum museums everywhere but not a drop to drink. I’m starting to almost get museum-ed out. Anyways, off to the subway to the National Portrait Gallery. I saw a few interesting photos I liked here, minus some Warhol portraits. I’m not the biggest Warhol fan. It’s like, good for him for thinking of what he did and doing with pop art what he did, but I generally hate pop art anyways and hate bright vivid colors, and that’s exactly what Warhol is. Plus he’s gay. HAHAH. No really I just don’t like his work. Unfortunately, they had an Irving Penn exhibition, but it was closed. I love Irving Penn, and was excited to see his work, only to be shutdown. How sad. After walking everywhere, I headed to meet the group at the café there. Had myself two cups of tea. Delish. Then it was off to the National Gallery which was not quite as large as the Lourve, but entirely booked with paintings and only paintings. I actually did see a lot of artists I’ve studied and a few I actually really like, namely Anthony Van Dyck and especially Peter Paul Rubens. Others I saw and recognized included Carvaggio, Monet, Manet, Surat, and many others that I can’t recall. After spending too long staring at a billion paintings, four of us headed out for lunch, and we could not have picked a more awkward place to eat. From the look of it on the outside, it looked like a simple sandwich and pastry shop, but once inside it turned into an incredibly cheaply decorated awkward looking restaurant with awkward waiters and food. The menus given to us after we were seated were like a foot by two feet and there were no words really, just pages and pages of pictures of what the food is. Easton and I split some pizza he wanted… it was like a tex mex pizza? It was the most mysterious pizza I’ve ever eaten. There were chunks of something on it that we were even daring one another to eat- that’s how odd it was. Hah. After eating we went back to the town where our hotel is I had some chill time and was again reminded how much I love my ‘Kacie time’. (In my journal I wrote “love kacie time” and I was like ‘what? Everyone decided to love on kacie time? I misread it and what I meant was ‘I love my personal, to myself, kacie time’ haha) Everyone else was either not back yet, or preparing for our critique in an hour and a half or so. Since I can’t really do anything for critique, I decided I could just count the number of rolls of film I had taken thus far. It turned out to be five, which having been abroad nearly two and a half weeks, that’s kind of pathetic it seems. But after thinking about it and doing some math, 5 rolls of film, each at 36 exposures equals 180 frames. 180 film photos is actually quite a bit. So I had to sit through the critique where I sit and listen to everyone talk about the supposedly few photos they’ve chosen from their collection thus far that are supposed to go along with the series aim and idea they pitched at the previous critique. Really all it ever turns out to be it people saying I have this, this, and this tell me what to do now. So odd to me, because I mean feedback is great, but I hate suggestions from others about how to change my work. I think everyone here really doesn’t know what they want to do- like they’re taking the photos and then deciding what they want their series to encompass, where as I prefer things to happen the other way around: choose what I’m aiming for, and then shoot following those set guidelines. It makes more sense to me, and also saves me a lot of time and editing I would assume in the end because I’m not taking a bunch of random photos of things that I think are pretty.
After a boring critique I had a crappy dinner at the hotel restaurant. Worst dinner I’ve had on the entire trip, not to mention crappy service. I was relieved to finally get back from dinner around 1045 so I could hit the sack and prepare for the early morning that would follow.
And by this point my knee is doing LOADS better, and I’ve been sleeping fabulously thanks to my ipod, with the exception of occasional waking up from snoring because one of the snorers keeps crashing in our room. That’s because it’s the community room. Whatever.

June 7, Day 16

We had to get up pretty early to ensure we got to our train in plenty of time to get to Lacock. I got tea and an apple turnover at a café by the subway station to tide myself over since we didn’t have time to have breakfast at the hotel. Subway to the train, train to Lacock. Not only were we going to get to tour the Lacock Abbey, the home of William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of the photographic negative, but we were also going to do a workshop with the curator for the museum and make salt prints!! As for museum visits as a whole, this one is my favorite thus far, and I think it’s because I was allowed to be hands on. I learn best that way really. I’m a visual hands on person, so today was perfect for me. After getting an explanation of how to make salt prints and a tour of the darkroom (my home away from home), they sent us off to grab a quick lunch before we really dove in. I had tea and little sandwiches as a tea shop just across the tea. It was awesome. Just a quiet little tea and sandwich shop on the corner of town. And town, mind you, that being Lacock, is literally only one square block. Very small, but very nice and quaint. After having lunch, I WENT TO HOGWARTS!!!! Don’t worry, I had others take photos of me in the hallways of Hogwarts, and I’d post them on here, but they have to get their photos uploaded and everything first, and that will take awhile seeing as we all have very VERY limited internet. Anyways, that in itself was quite an experience… walking in the same steps as the Harry, Ron and Hermione. I touched the walls of Hogwarts. BAHH!! So after walking around we eventually ventured into the house, erm, mansion. We were allowed to walk all over the house and in all of the rooms. I stood in front of Talbot’s infamous ‘Latticed Window’, or the window that is subject of the first ever negative. That was quite fun. Once we were done touring we headed back to the darkroom to make our own salt prints! Now, salt printing is specific to Talbot- it’s the method he found in ‘light writing’ or photography that worked best for him and he really perfected it. What you do is prepare a piece of paper with sodium chloride (HENCE the name SALT print). You just wet the surface with it, and then dry it. After the paper is dry you then add a layer of silver nitrate which when combined with the sodium chloride becomes light sensitive. So really you can to the sodium chloride layer in normal lighting situations, but you need a darkroom for the silver nitrate part. After drying the paper one last time, you can place it in a negative carrier with various plants and vegetation arranged however you want on top. Then all you do is lay it outside to expose. Easy as pie. I made 3 prints, it was a fun experience for sure. After we were done work shopping in such we just looked around the town a bit then took a double decker bus back to the train station. I rode on the top level at the very front on the left side of the bus, and let me tell you, it was sooo weird. I did have a few freak out moments where I thought the driver was turning left to go into the right lane on another street and it turned out he was like turning right in the complete opposite direction on the left side of the street. The UK is weird. After getting back to our area of town, a few of us ate dinner before going back to the hotel. I had an absolutely scrumptious meal at an Italian restaurant called zizzi’s. Though we had to wait awhile to be seated, our food came out surprisingly fast and was divine. After getting back to the hotel we just hung out, and I guess everyone and their mom wanted to watch 28 Weeks Later, a movie I had brought. There were six or so of us all squeezed into the hotel room... not really the ideal situation I want to be in to watch a movie, but I had to stay because it was my movie and I felt obligated to be there. It’s a good movie, not as good as the first, and was nice to see it again, but I was just kind of bothered throughout the entire film. When I get crowded, I get antsy, and I also feel like my hearing is amplified to where I can hear every movement, every crunch of someone eating food, every time someone swallows, even heavy breathing. It drove me insane and took away from my movie enjoyment. Not to mention the talking and asking questions happening throughout it which is a huge pet peeve of mine anyways. I guess I sound quite irritable, but I feel like some may be able to understand how I felt. Maybe. I just can’t stand when my space is invaded. Honestly at this point I was already tired of Jen’s and my room having been dubbed ‘the community room’ pretty much. My roommate in Paris, Dani, was never there, and that was perfect for me, because I always had a place to escape to. My room. This whole experience with my room being the community room is bringing back memories from my sophomore year of college when our dorm room was pretty much the community room and my space was constantly invaded. Oh well. It will be over soon

On the brighter side, I had 7 cups of tea. That’s a record, and I definitely couldn’t even go the whole night without waking up having to go to the bathroom. Haha.

June 6, Day 15

Nice relaxing morning with a lovely breakfast we’ve paid for at the hotel. I started the day off with about 3 cups of tea. Awesome. Today was a free day, so we could do whatever we wanted. When it has come to free days, I’ve generally just tagged along with everyone else because I don’t really know anything about where I am and would rather just let other people do the talking and planning. Yes, I’m lazy, but I don’t care. I just like to say I’m extremely easygoing. Everyone decided to go to the Tower of London, which I’m sure everyone knows what that is. I had no idea. Basically it was a large palace thing with a bunch of medieval stuff in it. I actually thought it was quite boring. I’m not so interested in history and historical artifacts and all that, but when it comes to Photography that’s a bit of a different story being involved in the medium myself. Maybe if I liked to sword fight and wear knight’s armor and jousted in my spare time I would have appreciated being there a little more. HAH. After we finally left there we decided to check out something we’d seen in add for on a map we have. It was called The London Bridge Experience and London Tombs- definitely sounds like my cup of tea, no pun intended. [little sidenote, a few of us stopped by subway before heading onward because we were hungry. I was quite amused by the fact that I literally ate a subway sandwich ON A SUBWAY!!! Hahahah] First of all to get there we walked across the London Bridge, and as I told my mom on skype, no, it did not fall down. Turns out the London bridge experience was like a history lesson interactive thing that lead into visiting the London Tombs, aka a haunted house. It was just like the ones in downtown KC. I absolutely loved it. We had to walk through the whole thing in a single file line holding the shoulders of the person in front of us. It was so fun. It started off with walking through a dark hall and we kept bumping into things- turns out they had like severed heads and limbs and bodies hanging from everywhere. Absolutely hilarious. It was a fun time, there was one point which I didn’t like so much though actually. One thing that has always even made me a little uneasy in scary movies is if the characters have to squeeze themselves through some tiny little tunnel or something. They actually had a section in this haunted house called ‘the big squeeze’ where there was a long hall lined with these black mats that you literally had to squeeze yourself through. I really didn’t like that. I thought I was going to get stuck and suffocate and die. But I’m alive so it’s okay. Of course the whole tour ended with walking into a room decorated to look like a butcher’s shop, and when we passed a certain point a dark figured reved up a chainsaw and started swinging it at us. It was awesome.
We were all pretty hungry afterwards, well I was. Other people just wanted a drink. So we stopped at a little pub restaurant and ate / people had drinks. I was the odd one out, as usual, everyone had alcoholic drinks while I had tea. Ha. I did also have a delicious asparagus and pea risotto along with my tea. The food in London, like I said, really isn’t so bad after all. Once we were back at the hotel everyone went out to the bars and I was the only one who stayed in, which usually tends to be the case. But in all honesty I like when everyone else goes out—I finally get to have some legitimate time to myself. I treated myself to a few cups of tea, some dry frosted flakes I saved from breakfast, and hung out and watched tv in ENGLISH. It was a nice ending to the day for me, and I was really excited to go to bed for Lacock Abbey the next morning… aka I’m GOIN TO HOGWARTS!!!!!