london=towers and... rome?

howdy peoples! i seriously just said howdy because today i realized how much i miss country music. england is getting too classy for me! i need some hillbilly in my life!! hahah never thought i'd hear myself say that. but today was an action packed day so get ready! this is gonna be a longgg post. 
we were off to an early start because even though we don't have class we had a lot of things planned throughout the city today. if you don't get to the big destinations before 10 am you are basically screwed. it was crazy to watch the hoards of tourists and students come in all at the same time. i have been so lucky to have such awesome professors/program directors who keep us doing amazing things all the time and require such little time in the classroom. in the spring they had class here in the centre 4 times a week and for our program we are only in here two times a week! i love it! 
so first off we were off to london tower! i think this place is most well known for the torture of various peoples as well as where a lot of people were killed, but it's actually a castle! the only 'castle' in London, i'm pretty sure. although there are a lot of palaces. it is really big! it's also really freaking old! surprise surprise right? what isn't old here? but it's actually built on the remains of an old roman fortress, and a lot of the structure that still stands today was erected around 1200 ad! that's like the time of the saxons! (i think?! hahaha) it is crazy cool. 

walking to the entrance on the thames... this place is huge! 

the 'white tower' where royalty actually lived 

royal guard! 

i forgot to mention beefeaters! these guys are sweet. they lead little tours but also take care of the ginormous ravens! sorry this is such a bad picture. the person i handed my camera to must struggle a bit. 

the famous ravens of the tower! they are fed meat everyday and have their own little cage. they will fly right up to the beefeaters. fun fact: apparently ravens have the largest brain of any bird! they can count up to six!... whatever that means. hahah

 view of the city within the tower

you can see where they housed the lions. they now have really cool modern sculptures all over the tower to illustrate where the animals would have been.

 it has an awesome location cause it's right by the thames river. so yeahhh. so the exhibits they have all over the place are freaking cool. nowadays the most well known one is the crown jewels! sadly i couldn't take any pictures in there but that display is really intense. they have a lot of the crowns, sceptres, swords.. and surprisingly one of the most impressive things they have on display is the royal family's silverware! everything is HUGE, super ornate, oh and pure gold! the one that was the craziest to me was the punch bowl that was 3 feet wide and could hold like thirty bottles of wine. the ladle was probably the same size as me. so anyways that was cool. 

can't take pictures inside! this is the best i could do.

after that i wandered over to some things i don't remember doing with my mom and sister last time we were here! so i was excited. first off, the royal armory is housed in the 'white tower' which in the main tower. it is also super impressive. they have the armor of tons of different kings, as well as different styles for various soldiers throughout different time periods. it was so cool! i felt like i was looking at set pieces from movies! i have to say sometimes i feel like hollywood kinda just makes stuff up, but they have been pretty spot on with the whole armor thing! it was so cool! they also had a lot of the stuff they used to arm the horses as well as swords and weapons like guns, maces.. all sorts of stuff! it was especially cool to see henry VIII's armor cause he was kind of a round fellow. along with all the armor they have a lot of royal gifts on display. they have a native american head dress from the crazy americans, some cool knives and stuff from ethiopia and japan.. all sorts of really neat stuff. 

okay pardon me while i have a moment of immaturity... but really? hahhahah. 

i guess another thing that insanely rich royal people like to send to each other is wild animals! so they had an exhibit on that as well. i guess back in the day they had all sorts of stuff roaming around... lions literally protected one entrance of the castle, the king of norway gifted a polar bear that was chained to wall but was let out on a rope on a daily basis to fish in the thames... they had zebras, ostriches, tigers, a baboon, snakes, an elephant! all sorts of crazy stuff! they had them all the way up to queen victoria, then moved all the animals into the london zoo when it opened in the 1800s. kinda cool! 
i was cliche and did go to another exhibit on the torture stuff. i have to say it was actually a little unimpressive! i think it is just really talked up because torture is such a gruesome thing and the tower of london sounds and looks like a good place for it. there are a lot unexplained murders that apparently happened in the tower and they told the stories for a lot of those, but honestly i thought the other stuff i saw was a lot more impressive! 
so at this point it was getting super windy and rainy so i decided to hide out in the little cafe and write postcards! kind of a cute moment. it was also getting towards lunch time so i decided to exit the tower to find some food! right outside the main entrance to the tower is a great view of tower bridge! now you may see tower bridge and think that it's london bridge.. but it turns out london bridge is actually now in lake havasu in arizona! after the blitz in world war 2 it was literally falling apart so they sold it to some rich dude in arizona and he put it in lake havasu! hahahah. americans are weird. but anyways the bridge is especially cool right now because they just recently put up the olympic rings on it! it looks sweet! but i got a special treat. when it gets windy they raise the rings up so they don't get blown around! so i got to see the plain bridge as well as the bridge with the rings. haha kinda cool. 

with rings! 

plain bridge :) 

so i wandered around a little bit looking for a place where i could eat a baguette inside because it was so cold!! finally i found one. of course i took pictures of my food. i think it's an american thing. but the baguettes here and all over europe are the best. thing. ever. it is just a really plain, good, french baguette and then whatever fillings you choose. my favorite is just meat and cheese, and today i got ham and jarlsberg. it was so nommmmmyyyy! i could eat one every day. at this point it was like pouring rain and i was freezin. so i went in a super sketchy (and not to mention stinky) souvenir shop and go the best poncho of all time. it's like an obnoxiously bright coral color, has a huge hood that makes me look like a 7-foot-tall gnome, and even comes with a belt! hahaha it is so funny. i tried to take a picture but it didn't turn out quite the way i wanted it to, so i will try some other time cause i'm sure i will be busting that baby out again. 

cutest poncho evaaaa! 

after we all had lunch on our own we met up to go on our second 'london walk'. this walk was titled 'the walls of londinium' and it was freaking cool. frank, our professor didn't talk very much but it was just a cool place. so londinium obviously sounds a lot like london. that's cause it's the same thing! the romans actually settled london around 40 ad and called it londinium. cool right? so what we did on our walk today was follow around a lot of the old roman roads which are now buried underground. what now covers them is the financial district, which has always been a very powerful and important part of london because the merchants have always played such a strong role in politics and the economy. the financial district has a lot of really cool modern architecture because so much of it was destroyed in the blitz. for example it has that big egg like looking skyscraper. apparently it's actually supposed to be the shape of a pickle! fun fact of the day. but anyways not all of this area was destroyed! really cool buildings like the guildhall that holds the mayors office still stands. right across from the guildhall is a newer building that was built in the 1990s. i can't remember specifically what it's for, but they ended up designing the building to have a little art gallery in the basement level. when they were excavating they actually found the remains of a roman amphitheater! there had been rumors of one existing in london but it had never been found. so they basically redesigned the whole basement so that they could build around the amphitheater remains and have them open to the public. it was freaking sweet! it was a really unique display and the whole building had a really cool art-deco feel with all the black and gold and egyptian motifs. i love stuff like that after taking my interior design class. after that we continued our walk. in the financial district it was really cool to also see all of the old churches that were luckily left standing after the blitz. 

so this is three sides of the square where the building that has the roman remains are. it looks boring but this was actually interesting to me because it is really rare in london to get new architecture as well as old buildings. 

okay this picture looked a lot cooler when i took it... but these are the roman ruins! the exhibit was really cool

most people only focus on visiting the really huge extravagant cathedrals but i really enjoy the small chapels. they are really peaceful. one that we went into had a really neat story. so it was actually hit directly by a bomb during the blitz but the bomb came straight through the roof and didn't detonate! turns out the oldest organ in the UK is actually in there and the bomb only missed it by a couple of inches! crazy huh? so basically the moral of this story as well as the roman thing is that history is literally EVERYWHERE in london. it blows my mind!! i can't even begin to wrap my head around it.

oldest organ in the UK!

plaque marking where the bomb hit the floor but didn't detonate... and my cute shoes :) 

oh just an ancient roman wall in the middle of brand new buildings

so finally our walk ended at the museum of london. this museum is awesome. i am not a museum person and i thought this one was so cool. i think a lot of people typically choose places like the national gallery or the victoria and albert and stuff over this one because it's in kind of a random place and yeah i don't know. but anyways it basically tells the story of london! starting all the way back in like 3000 BC. they have a bunch of arrowheads and stuff from like neanderthal people. then it goes all the way towards the present day! i didn't realize until i was basically out of the museum that i actually could've taken pictures and i wish i would've! they had so many cool things!! i really liked the exhibits they had on roman london as well as the great fire in the 1660s that destroyed thousands of homes. our professor, professor jacoby always says that london didn't get back to the level it was at when rome occupied it (until about 400 ad) until about 1500.. and today i think i finally realized that! it is insane how sophisticated and technologically advanced the romans were. and i guess it's still odd to me cause i just don't think of roman empire when i think of london! but they are definitely connected! ahh that museum was so so so cool. i recommend it for sure!

they have the little cake displays in every cafe! kinda hard to resist! 

finally it was time to go back to the centre! my feet hurt so stinking bad! i was so ready to go back. today was our last lecture we had with tim slover! he will definitely be missed. today's lecture was on contemporary theatre! it was super neat. he gave us a list off west end, off west end, and fringe theatres that he always pays attention to. we have a lot of free nights so i hope to be filling those up soon! theatre here in the uk is different from the us. here it is a lot more like the movies. for instance back home when we have a free night, we're like let's go to the movies! here they often go to plays! so yeah, there is a lot more stuff to choose from here. after our lecture we had dinner! todays dinner was kind of funny to me. so at first we had bread and salad.. just like every night... then came out the main dish.. which was... ribs and curly fries? uhhhh... what? hahahhah we were all cracking up. it was good though so whatever! i also checked the mail and guess what i got?! OLYMPIC TICKETS! they are here! it's real! i'm going to the gold medal soccer game for the women!!!!!! BAHHHH. this is unreal. i will probably cry when it happens. 

since then i have just been posted up here in my bed! i am exhausted! i haven't gotten more than 5 hours of sleep since i got here! we all stay up until like midnight then i wake up at 5 am still! it's terrible! a lot of people went out and did fun things so i am just living vicariously through them tonight. some people went and saw mama mia which is great. i have seen it a couple times though so i decided to save some money. then another group went salsa dancing with the spanish speaking ward that some of our RMs are in! how cool is that? i would have gone except i literally can't walk. okay well i can walk but i don't really want to. haha. i just want to sleep for days. but you can sleep when youre dead so i'll party on!! #YOLO. hahahah. i think that is all for today! tomorrow we are going to the tate modern museum which i am excited for! and then i think i will find something fun to do tomorrow night. wish me luck! ttfn! ta ta for now :) 

collages of the day! one is mine and one is from abbie :)

for narnia!!!!!

hi peoples! hope everyone is doing good. today's post will be pretty short compared to yesterday so you can all breathe a sigh of relief cause i know that was intense.
today was class day again! we have class mondays and thursdays, for two and a half hours all together. some people really dread the class time but to be honest i think it is really interesting and i kind of look forward to it. these are seriously some of the more interesting classes i have taken and it's really cool to be on such a personal level with the professors as opposed to being in a huge class with like 300 kids. it is so cool to be here and be taking these courses.
so at twelve we are done with class and are let out to go get lunch, the only meal the center doesn't provide. my friend lauren has been wanting to try some traditional food at the pub so today we finally went and did it! it was pretty legit.. they had all the fish and chips and pies and all that stuff that makes you think of england. we got this plate thing to share, which gives you a sampling of a bunch of different things. we had a steak and ale pie, a steak and kidney pie, yorkshire pudding (this is definitely not what you think when you think of pudding), and some sausages. it was really filling! we didn't eat all of it haha. i think the pies were my favorite! but in all honesty it was kind of just a big hot meaty mess and i probably wouldn't get it again unless it starts snowing outside or something... and trust me that isn't happening anytime soon. it is a freaking hot mess over here. i die in humidity. i feel disgusting. yuck.

 you can't tell what's going on here but this is the side of a royal mail van! i mailed my first postcard today! if you want one please leave your address and i'd be happy to send you one! :) 

after our little outing we had another lecture with tim slover from the U. this time he talked for about an hour and a half regarding the life and times of shakespeare. let me just say... this guy has a gift. he is so interesting to listen to. not only is he interesting, you actually learn something from him. what a concept right?! like i said a couple days ago.. i literally feel like he is giving us all deep dark secrets key to understanding theatre and the arts. he leaves after this week and that will be sad. but i definitely enjoyed having him around to help us learn!

so we got done with that at around 2:30, then had some free time before our nightly devotional and dinner. so i decided to go to oxford street! my mom had recommended it as a good shopping street so of course i was so there. once i got off the tube and was above ground... can i just say overwhelming? holy crap. there is four huge streets that have shops on shops on shops on shops! and they are all GINORMOUS! like those huge forever 21's they have that kind of just make you sick to your stomach because they are so freakin big. i thought i was gonna have time to go in all these different places but i just went into top shop, which was right outside the stop, and i was in there forever! anine told me to go in there and i loved it! that place is like a black hole though, cause you wanna look at everything. i kind of felt like i was in a department store. they even have frozen yogurt and a cupcake shop in the back.. that's how big it is! like i said it really reminds of forever 21 except a little bit nicer.. and cuter in my opinion but that might be just because i'm in London. haha. but i got two pairs of colored skinny jeans (mint and powder blue) and a pair of shoes! little leather t-straps that are super cute. so it was a success. i will probably go back to oxford cause i didn't even scratch the surface, but if anyone knows of any cute streets with boutiques please let me know cause that's what i really like! 

i had to get back to the centre for dinner and our devotional! so it was back on the tube. which was gross. it gets super warm down there which doesn't make a lot of sense but it is just sticky and packed and not fun at all. for dinner here we had this really weird dish. i wish i took a picture... basically it was like a shrimp salad served in an avocado. it was okay.. probably not something i would make again. i know a lot of people went out to dinner afterwards so yeah, not the most popular dish we've had.
after that it was off to the thing i have been looking forward to for a while! me and the girl i share a bunk with (chelsie from gilbert, az) went and saw the lion the witch and the wardrobe in kensington gardens! it's in a theatre i've actually been in before and it is really neat. it's a 360 theatre so the stage is actually like a circle in the middle. along with that it's in a tent, which also acts as a screen. so instead of scenery they have a lot of images projected up on the ceiling/walls and it's really cool. all in all it was really neat! i think i liked the peter pan that i saw here a couple years ago a little better but i think i am biased because peter pan is like my favorite story ever. one thing that was really cool was the puppetry they used to portray aslan, the trees, and some of the animals. a lot of it was really similar to how lion king is done if you have ever seen that.

the tent where the play is! 

there is also a little dining tent! this was a cute little station where you could fill up a bag with some gummy candies. i thought the floating lampshades were cute

we tried turkish delight! the candy the white witch gives to edmund. it's freaking nasty don't eat it. 

the program

OH! i forgot. so we got our tickets last night at this place called 'last minute tickets' where you can get them for cheaper and cheaper, depending on how long you wait. so we got the best seats available for like 10 pounds which was awesome. so as we were sitting down one of the ushers came up to us and asked if it was just the two of us. we answered yes but i was kinda scared because i thought maybe our tickets were illegitimate and she was gonna kick us out. turns out she just had some empty seats on the second row and decided to offer them to us! so that was our lucky moment of the day.
it was cool to come back tonight and here everyone talk about all the different things they did in their spare time. some people went to wicked, others went to a screening of frankenstein.. it's just interesting to see everyone's quirky interests.

collage of the day! 

so now im gonna do some reading and get ready for bed! tomorrow we are doing the tower of london and some walks along old roman roads and such so i will update you on that when i can! until then! for narnia! hahahahahah

foggy castles, cliffs, and cathedrals

hello again from a muggy day in jolly old england! i want to apologize again (this is mostly for my mother) that my blog posts are being kinda sketch. basically i have to upload the pictures overnight because the internet is sooooooo slow, so all my posts won't be published until the day after. but i do write them the day of. 

so today! today was a very long day. i feel like this morning was forever ago! we started out really early because like i said yesterday we had to catch the coach really early. so we had our cute little breakfast of yogurt and toast and fruit just like everyday. i can already tell you i am gonna miss the yogurt here. the consistency is really good and it's not too sweet... so it doesn't give you a tummy ache like i feel some of the yogurt back home does. but now i'm gonna start talking about interesting things as opposed to yogurt... hahah sorry about that.

so we got on the coach and headed to Dover first! it was about a two hour drive even though it's only about 80 miles outside of london because the traffic within the city was so bad. i tried to look out the window to get a good look at the countryside but you can guess that didn't last too long. as professor jacoby likes to say.. our wednesday coach trips turn into the 'narcolepsy express' about 15 minutes into the drive. so one minute i was bobbing off in london and the next i am in a creepy foggy green place. seriously it was straight out of a movie. this fog was intense. i was a little freaked. pretty soon it was clearing out though, because it was super windy. apparently it's always windy in dover. we parked in the coach park then it was off to the castle! 

notice the fog! kinda cool

this castle is pretty sweet. i tried to take some good pictures but it's really hard to capture all of it because it's so dang big! but to put it in perspective on a timeline... there are some parts that date all the way back to the time when the romans occupied england! that puts us at about 400 AD. that's a really long time ago. as of now there is only one tower standing (actually it might be the remains of a lighthouse, now that i think of it), and the rest of the castle was constructed around 1100-1400 AD, still a freaking long time ago, especially when compared to what we think of as 'historic' back in the states. so i guess this was kind of like the main crib for both henry VIII and henry II, and it was a good spot because it's right across the channel, so france is right there. so whenever france and england were in a bit of a tiff, (hahaha this wordage is for erika) dover became the 'key' to england because it was the first place they would hit on the coast. needless to say this means there were a lot of old barricades and military fortifications from various periods.. especially the napoleonic era because he was kind of conquering all over the place. 

 unexpected colors! at least i thought so 

 stained glass in the kings private chapel above his room 

stone on stone on stone...not very glamorous! 

the 'great tower' is the main part of the castle. this is where they had the major recreation of how it was back in the day. i have to say, i was super surprised at how brightly colored things were back then. there was a lot of cheery red, blue, and yellow. whenever i think of that era i think of deep greens and reds and velvet and jewels and stuff, but it definitely doesn't appear like it was like that! so yeah, wandered around the main part of the castle which had some neat exhibits for about an hour or so, then it was on to my favorite part of the day. 

so like i said earlier, this place was really revamped in the 1790s (napoleon times) because the english were kind of scared of him, i think. so they started building these tunnels kind of below the castle in the soft chalk that makes up the famed white cliffs of dover. these things were pretty legit, and the english did work on them. they would have these pretty intense tunnels done within a year of starting them... which is insane when you think about late 18th century technology. they were used to quarter troops and for various other reasons until i think the 1890s, then they were kind of forgotten. then world war two rolled around. unbeknownst to the public, one of britain's major generals, general ramsey, set up his main post in these secret tunnels. they literally lived underground, made major war decisions, and tracked naval movement within the channel. from this location, ramsey also headed the rescue of over 300,000 british soldiers from the failed battle of dunkirk, where the germans basically spanked the allies. ramsey was a real hero because everyone expected to only rescue/evacuate 40,000 soldiers from dunkirk. so he saved a ton of people. but what makes these tunnels so cool (there was also a hospital tunnel, which i didn't have time to tour), is that the government kept them completely secret until the 1990s! a large part of them is still closed off to the public. as a matter of fact, the tour i went on today has only been offered since last year. it is freaking cool. after world war two, some large things were left behind, such as this table thing where they would chart naval movement across the channel. if there was a ship that didn't match the schedule on the board, the people in the dover tunnels would issue a warning to the ship, then give the call to fire on it. so a lot of intense stuff went down in there. another interesting fact is that the lowest and largest level, known as 'dumpy' (don't ask me why... sounds like a huge toilet to me), was actually designed to serve as a nuclear bunker for all of london and dover/canterbury. so it's pretty impenetrable. keep in mind this is assuming that the nuclear strike is on london, so the population would be significantly lower... but long story short this thing was freaking cool. dad it made me think of you a lot because i know how much you like the world war two stuff, i would love to bring you back here. this place also really reminded me of disneyland (i know, only i would say that) because it was set up in such a fun way. you went from room to room and a voice would come over an intercom and tell you what to do. all the doors were strictly automatic and you could only leave when this light over the door turned green. they tried to make you feel like you were a member of the military (WW2 era) and they did an excellent job. definitely highlight of my day.

oh and ps you can't take pictures in there so i am sorry about that! i did snap a few when my guide would disappear.. hehe

start of the tour. notice the red light over the door, meant we couldn't go anywhere yet

after that it was back on the coach and we were off to the white cliffs that i mentioned earlier! (wow guys, this is gonna be a long post. please bear with me. im sorry if you want to stab yourself by the end). okay so the cliffs! they were really lovely. we were crunched for time though, so we didn't quite get to the end of the trail like i would have wanted to. i guess there is also a 2 mile hike that takes you to a lighthouse and a little place where you can have tea and im sure that would have been really charming. but oh well! the view was super neat. (since when do i say lovely, charming, and neat in one paragraph? wow). where we were was right over the HUGE port and that itself was a sight to see. it was like it's own mini city of trucks loading stuff onto the barges that come in. it was really intimidating, i kinda felt like it could blow up or something at any minute. don't ask me why stuff like that freaks me out. so 25 minutes at the cliffs then back onto the coach! wahooo!

so now we were off to canterbury for a scheduled tour of the cathedral! this cathedral is a big deal because it is where the first archbishop of canterbury, thomas beckett, was killed by four knights during the reign of henry II. the title of archbishop of canterbury is a big deal because when england was under rome (aka when england was catholic), the archbishop of canterbury was the main bishop in england, the only person he answered to was the pope. then when henry VIII went protestant, the archbishop of canterbury became the head hauncho of the church of england! so he is kind of equivalent to the pope. except not really because the catholic church is ginormous and ancient and the church of england... not so much. but in modern days he is important because he has to marry all the royalty! so when william and kate got married he was the guy that did it. kind of cool. 

the cathedral is really really really cool. i kind of have a thing for cathedrals. i have always liked them. they are really peaceful, and obviously beautiful, and i really like the smell of the stone. i'm a freak i know. this cathedral was pretty old. it was built on top of the site that was given to st. augustine back in the time of the anglo-saxons (sorry if that's not right, my brain is kind of mush right now). it has burned down a couple times though, and even now it is undergoing restoration because the foundation is starting to sink. they had a lot of really cool burial sights. it was interesting to see how a lot of them had been defaced by the puritans. they would literally chop off the heads and saw down the faces of the little figurines. it was very sad. also a lot of the famous stained glass had been shot out by some cromwell guy who came in with a bunch of muskets... not cool mr. cromwell. some was salvaged however, and it was really neat to see how it tells a story. i love stained glass. speaking of stained glass this was another highlight of my day. so in one of the chapels they have some stained glass windows that were done by this hungarian guy in 1957. as soon as we saw them one of the girls was like "that girl kind of looks like jasmine from aladdin..." turns out this same guy actually worked for disney and did some animation for snow white! how cool is that! so i loved that. back to the people defacing the cathedral, though. there used to be all this stuff for thomas beckett because he is kind of a big deal there. but thanks to henry VIII the one who left the catholic church, all of it was removed and destroyed! it was really quite sad. the only thing they really have was this ring down in the crypt treasury which was actually kind of creepy. i guess the archbishop that succeeded beckett wore it, and it actually has a piece  of beckett's bone in the ring! how eerie is that? 

roman tower used to pump water... so the monks had flushing toilets like a million years ago! 

disney stained glass!!! yay :) 

so that was basically the end of our tour with our cute old little guide lady. after that we had about an hour in canterbury and i was pumped. canterbury, especially the main square just oustide the cathedral, looks like it's straight off of a movie set. it's adorable. i went in some kitchenware shops because i am really hoping to find some china, but nothing really caught my eye. then i started to head back to the coach park (aka the parking lot, but don't say that here because they have no idea what you're talking about) because i knew i was gonna get lost. on the way i found the cutest place. it was called the shake shack. it looked like something people would line up two hours for in new york. i walked past it twice and resisted... but the third time got me. the menu was insane. 

 please tell me this doesn't look insanely good...

my parents are probably gonna disown me but i totally caved and got a shake. i did get it skinny though! wee hooo. but i got the pots au chocolate something? i don't know but it tasted amazing. apparently they don't believe in making thick milkshakes here, however, so that was a little disappointing. so i had that and was just a very happy camper. we didn't really have much of a lunch or dinner plan so i figured i'd get a sandwich. i like baguettes so i started looking for that... sadly they were out of the good ones and i ended up getting an egg salad sandwich again. hahaha what is up with that? it was really good again but i think i'm gonna find another go-to food because i can have those whenever in the states. so anywho i keep walking towards where i think the coach is and i am definitely lost. i am not good with directions. it didn't help that i asked like 3 different groups of people and they all told me different things. finally one lady was like just go in a pub and ask, they will help you. welp, couldn't find a pub, so i just went in the first shop i saw and didn't really pay attention. so this is my funny story: so i walk in the shop and the guy kind of rolled his eyes at me. i was surprised because i didn't really look like a tourist so i was wondering why he was bothered by me. i asked where the coach park was and he looked really relieved and answered my question. while he was answering i realized how strongly the shop smelled like pot. as i looked around i realized i was totally in like a hookah marijuana drug toy store. hahahahahaha. there was this huge sign outside that said 'no one under 18' so i think the clerk guy was worried that i was some kid coming looking for drugs. hahahah i thought that was funny though, and also hoped no one from my group saw me! wouldn't want to be sent home from byu study abroad for illegal drug use. woops. 

so i miraculously made it back on the coach and wasn't left to fend for myself in canterbury. yay ali. i slept most of the way home and was woken by the bus driver pointing out the olympic park/stadium. dang that thing is HUGE. holy holy holy. can't wait to go there! but this place is gonna be a freakin zoo. once we got back a lot of people went out to dinner because we didn't have anything here at the centre. i reheated my curry from a few nights ago and got straight to studying cause i had a lot of reading to do. and now here i am in my cutest little bunk.

 instagrams from today! 

tomorrow is class day, along with another lecture from slover. tomorrow night me and the girl i share a bunk with are going to see the lion the witch and the wardrobe in kensington gardens! i am super stoked. updates on that tomorrow! yahoo. until then! see ya guys!