Everything So Far

I'm here! And having a wonderful time. Despite the fact that I'm really terrible about taking pictures and that it's hard to want to sit in front of the computer when there's so much to do, I'm going to attempt to make this whole blog thing work. Hopefully I'll be better about it, but you'll have to bear with me until I get the hang of it. So, time to catch you up on what I've been up to thus far...

99 Great Russell Street is home until April 25th. We live right next to the building that our classrooms are in and only have classes two days a week. I know, tough life.

This is what our flats look like from the outside. The area we're in is Bloomsbury and we're right down the block from the British Museum. The museum is free, so it's nice to wander around there sometimes and, you know, hang out with the Rosetta Stone and stuff. We're also a few blocks away from Soho and Covent Garden, where there's always something going on. We're not too far from Regents Park, either, which is perfect for running.
Our flats are very nice, but of course it would work out that our flat is in a separate building from everyone else and up a ridiculous amount of winding stairs. There's also a really weird smell sometimes that everyone in the building has complained about, but our housing people can't figure out what it is. Oh well, better that we're not hanging around here a lot anyway.
We're also right across from this "statue of the bloke helping the other bloke."
When we first got here they took us on a bus tour so we could get an idea of where everything is. We had just enough time to jump out and pose in front of Buckingham Palace. Ashley, Christine, Roe, and I all live together.
Here's a group of us outside of a pub nearby. The old British guys found us entertaining and took this picture for us. We've been to a few pubs and clubs in the area, so it's been a good time and we've met people studying at the University of London, which is a few blocks away.
Here is the famous London Eye on the River Thames. Sometimes you'll be in a random area of London and you'll see it creeping in the distance above the buildings. To be honest, I don't know if it was really worth what we paid, but I guess it was cool to see the city from that height. I got terribly blurry pictures, though. If you go, it would probably be cooler at night and not during a foggy day.
And then there's Big Ben. I have about 50 million more pictures of him if you want to see them. He's just chillin' by the river and you can't help but to keep taking pictures.
We also went to the Tower of London, where they chopped off people's heads and such. This is from the outside of the surrounding walls and, in the middle where that flag is, is the White Tower.
This is our Beefeater lady who was our tour guide and that's the Tower Bridge in the background.
This is the courtyard with houses that have cool blue doors. I don't really remember who lived here because at this point we were freezing and starving, but I'm pretty sure Anne Boleyn was there at some point and some others who had their heads chopped off, too. If you look towards the left of the picture, there's a little guard man who walks back and forth. Those are some ravens in the middle. The Tower has to have ravens there at all times for good luck.
On our way back from the Tower we were on the bus, excited to be warm and heading somewhere to eat. Then the bus stopped and wouldn't go any further because there was a protest in Trafalgar Square. So, we ended up walking and getting stuck right in the middle of the protest about Palestine, surrounded by police in their day-glo outfits, some of whom were on horses. Eventually we made it out of there on the tube and had our first meal of fish and chips. We used to just get chips at a place on the corner near our flats that was open 24/7, but sadly, Dionysus closed because of all the reconstruction going on around here. Somehow we'll have to survive.
We're also conveniently located near Leicester Square where they have all the big movie premieres, so of course we had to stop by the red carpet for Revolutionary Road to see Kate and Leo. Getting squashed by tons of people and having to stand very closely to a strange man who kept humming was worth the glimpses we got.
They are very beautiful people. I guess we'll have to actually go see the movie at some point.
The nice thing about this trip is that they've set up a lot of things for us, like seeing shows every week and a few trips to other parts of England. The first show that we saw was Edward Scissorhands...the ballet. It was pretty strange, and it can't really compare to the movie, but seeing ballet dancers dressed as shrubbery was sort of cool. There was a little too much choreography similar to that of a musical, but it was pretty when they did actual ballet dancing. We also just saw Buddy, the Buddy Holly musical, which was cute and you can't really go wrong with the music.
For the inauguration we went to a pub nearby. It's nice that people here and in Europe like us a lot better now that Obama's around. A few Brits toasted to him, while others booed when Bush came on the screen. They were also very considerate of our little group, making sure we had a good view of the TV.
While I'm taking two English courses here, I'm also taking an Art and Architecture class with an adorable British man, Wilson Briscoe. He's an older gentleman who tends to mumble, so it's a little hard to hear him when we're walking around places. This man knows everything about everything. We just listen to him talk about famous things and walk around. Good deal for a class, right? This is a shot from our walk by the Thames and you can see the top of St. Paul's Cathedral towards the middle right.

I think that catches you up on everything for the most part. We also had a shopping day on Oxford Street and then went down to Harrod's. I've decided that I would like to live in the food section of Harrod's because they have every type of food you can imagine. I'll definitely be going back, so I'll be sure to take some pictures. I got amazing scones there. I would be very happy living here on tea and scones for life.

This weekend my close friends here went to Paris, but I opted not to so I can save up for other trips (Italy and Ireland in March, then I'll see what happens from there). I also feel like we just got here and it's a bit early to be leaving already. So, I had some time to adventure on my own in Covent Garden and the Portobello Road market in Notting Hill. I'll try to go into further detail about things soon, but I think this is quite enough for now. Time to go to the Soho Theatre to see Kristen Schaal (from Flight of the Conchords) and Kurt Braunohler, thanks to my darling brother. You should visit his site (www.danmcnamara.com) and watch his comedy series, Amazing the Lion (www.icn.tv).