A love affair with the city of London

I love London...I just Love It!! I love living in a city, I love the diversity of THIS city! The sights, the smells (well some of them not so much), the sounds!!!

So today I ran some errends and then I was like, I want to see a play tonight, so I went and got standby tickets for Glen Garry Glen Ross, a Mamet play! I'm really excited! So here are some more facts about London

Sirens are a fact of life, you will always hear them, likewise with airplane and sometimes car horns

The sales tax is worked into the price, so when it says it will be 1,25 pounds, then that is all you have to pay, none of this estimating 5% crap...I really like it

Another thing, they dont use periods to seperate pounds from pences, they use commas, for example 1.25 is how we would do it but 1,25 is how they would write it

They charge you more if you are going to eat in a cafe then if you carry it out

Kings Cross ALWAYS smells....it's best not to ask why....

NEVER try to climb the broken escalator at Angel....it is the size of 3 normal escalators and you will be dead before the top

Elevators are lifts

You know how we call dollars "bucks"? Well they call pounds "quid"

The dark dreary days....

So today it rained, and by 4:00pm it was already dark outside. It gets dark so early here!! It really steals about half of your day!! So some things that I have noticed

Plasters = Band-aid

They spell things wrong here...for example civilisation, colour, favourite to name a few

While they may drive on the left, they stay to the right when walking, just like we do in the States

They cannot cook pasta...it just cannot be done

It is totally normal to hear 7 different languages on the tube

It is totally normal to hear someone that looks like they are from the middle of India, or from the heart of Africa or from the plains of China speaking with a cockney accent....

Veggie = Vegetarian

Food is cheaper over here, but with the exchange rate, it cost about exactly what it would in the States

British kids are so cute, especially when they get all cheeky!

I think I'm going to write about Rome

So we got to Rome on Thursday and after a fiasco, we went to a hotel for the night.

On Friday we spent most of the day finding our Hostel, which was an hour outside of Rome. It was on the Mediterranean Coast, which we all thought was way cool. Unfortunately it was way COLD. I guess we didn't think that it got very cold there, but it did, so we never went in the water, but we did go down to the beach, and it was beautiful. Our Hostel was actually a campground, and our 'bugalow' was actually a wooden cabin without any heat. It was so cold at night, I had 4 blankets on and slept in 2 layers of clothes with 4 pairs of socks, and I was still cold. After the Beach we went to the local town to get food. You could tell it was a touristy summer town, which meant that since we were there in the off season that it was a ghost town. Everything was closed and we could only find a health food grocery store. So we got some bread and sliced deli meat. Then we found this little shop that was open and we got Gelati, but the lady didn't speak any english, so we got some weird flavors that we didn't really want. We then went back to the campground and ended up getting dinner from the restaurant on site and we saved the other food for lunch the next day. I also bought toilet paper because they didn't provide any. A lot of places didn't, and also, they don't have toilet seats in Italy. It is like the men of the country have perpetually left the seat up!! it was awkward!!!

The next day we went into the city. We stood in line for about an hour for the Colosseum, but then decided to pay 8 extra euros jump the line and get a tour in English, which was really nice. The Colosseum was really cool and we took lots of photos (look on my facebook if you want to see them) The coolest thing that I think i saw was that at all the exits they have found ancient maps of the city, so that people leaving could figure out where they wanted to go! Then we stopped and made ourselves lunch and then went to Palentine Hill for our second tour, which was a lot better than the first. After the tour Cana felt sick, so Jesse went back with her and then the rest of us hung around a little longer and then went to a real grocery store in the city. We then went back and Keisha made Spaghetti.

The next day was Sunday and Jesse really wanted to go to Mass, so we all decided that we would just go to Vatican city and we would be sure to find a Church somewhere and then we could go to Mass. So we walked up to St. Peters and we saw a line, and I just did what I do best, I got in that line and stood there. It is common knowledge that when you see a line you should get in it because it normally goes someplace cool. Well this one did. It went inside the Vatican and we got to go to Mass there! Then we came out of the service and the Pope was giving his blessing in languages, so we got to be blessed! Sweet huh? Then Jesse and I walked around the Vatican for a while and took pictures and did some shopping and got Gelati, while everyone else did some things that we got to see the next day anyway!

On Monday we went back to Vatican city to see the Vatican Museum. We rushed through the first part because we wanted to see the Sistine Chapel before it closed, and we had heard that it was really far from the entrance. It was, but little did we know, we could not go back through the part of the Museum that we rushed through...which was kind of sad, but the Sistine Chapel was AMAZING. I'll admit that I thought it would be bigger but it was beautiful!!! Then we ate lunch and left the Vatican. We headed toward the Pantheon. Our walk there took us by the famous castle that has operas written about it and down the most Italian streets I had seen! We stopped at the cutest Gelati place! Up until then I had thought all of Rome was just dirty, and true, alot of it is. Most of the pictures of a nice clean Rome are really of Vatican City, but these roads were so quidessentially Italian. It was the Rome I had seen in movies! We past a Piazza (I cant remember the name, its the one that was a stadium but they filled it in to make a round square) which was really cool because it had all these artists in it selling their work! So we went to the Pantheon, which was really cool, then we went to some Column that Shelly wanted to see and then we went to Trevi Fountain!!! We all threw coins in, so we are all going to come back, though Mike's didn't go in at first. It was really cool and beautiful!! By then it was dark, so we headed home and played cards and went to bed early.

The next day we got up and checked out of the campground and said goodbye to the cats that had been following us around (I made sure to stay away because I'm allergic). Then we went to a Church called St. Peter in Chains, which has a famous statue of Moses by Michelangelo. After seeing that we went shopping for a bit and then went to a building that the Italians have nicknamed "the Wedding Cake" and I dent remember the proper name, so we are just going to call it that, while Shelly and Cana went to some more ruins. Jesse and I climbed to the top of the monument while the others stayed with our bags. We passed the Tomb of the Unknown soldier and we had a fabulous view of the city from the top! we took lots of pictures! Then we went to a church called St. Clement. It was really cool because it is a church, built on top of an older church built on top of a Roman temple built on top of a Roman house, and they just found another level. We went down into the archeological dig site and it was really neat! I felt like Indiana Jones (I'll admit I freaked myself out a little bit...I kept watch for poison darts and big rolling stones, and I kept thinking...man, I hope there is not a earthquake) It was really dark and smelly. After the church we had dinner at a place and I got Italian Spaghetti and red wine! I felt so Italian! Then we went  to the airport and came home!

Oh the British Library

I just got back from studying at the British Library, not a British Library but The British Library, as in the equivalent to the Library of Congress kind of thing. International Students are allowed to get a library card there and so I did! I had a really productive time there once I got comfortable with the system. It is a really intimidating place, like, there are all these really super smart people with like 10 PhD's sitting next to you, and you're still reading books with pictures in them (well maybe that is an exaggeration...maybe....) But you have to order books online and then they have to go get them from out of the millions of books they have, and it can take up to 2 days for them to find the books. But anyways, I got some good research for my History of Islam term project done and I worked on some Dramatic Lines Journals and started to sketch out my term project too...so all in all a good day.

So I've noticed that on British food, when they want to say "natural" or "no preservatives" they say "No Nasties" yes, nasties...isn't that funny???

I was also musing on the fact the British school children, especially girls, are really really loud and boisterous, but British adults are on a whole, very quite, patient, passive people. How is it that these children turn into that type of adult? Does the British government have like a reeducation program after highschool to tone these children down? Who knows, we may be closer to the England of Orwell then we know...

We were talking in class one day about Americans in Britain and Dr Linda Mills-Woolsey said "Sometimes people will ask 'are you Canadian', I think this means that they are trying to be nice to you, but if they ask 'are you American' you know that it's an insult" it was pretty much the funniest thing ever...i about died laughing, but it is so true!!! Did you know that for the first time like....ever the Canadian Dollar is stronger than the US Dollar. It's incredible. You know you've studied abroad when you obsessively watch the strength of the Dollar.....usually it is decreasing. The Dollar is the lowest it has been in 26 years in comparison to the pound...yeah I picked a great time to study in London....

And on that cheery note I shall leave you all because it is dinner time...I hope they don't try to make pasta again...the British just cant make pasta....its gross..never order Lasagna, you can thank me later for this tip!

My Life Goal

So I probably should write about my experiences in Rome because they are so fresh in my mind, but I don't think I am going to because they ARE so fresh in my mind. I think I need a little perspective...It was a really really good trip, but by then end I had had enough of the people I was with, so I think I should wait to write so that I have less of a bias against them.

Anyway, I have a new life goal. Everyone needs one, and I have finally found mine. I'm going to get married, have a baby and buy a dog and then walk through the parks of London arm and arm with my Husband, pushing our baby's stroller and walking our dog. It will pretty much be the best life ever! I see this scene so many times and in so many variations that I just cant help wanting it. So now that I know my goal I really need to work on making it come true...haha...well I'll just wait until I get done with college before that. Speaking of marriage, we had a really weird sermon at Church last week about how it is better to be single than married...yeah, it gave me a lot to think about.