greenwich and the opening ceremonies

yoooo!!! sorry i am so behind you guys! this post is for friday and it is now sunday night. my bad! 
alright! so! on friday we had a little day trip out to greenwich! (pronounced gren-itch, not green-witch. get it right). it was sweet! it's basically a suburb of london.. but you can't really tell where one ends and one begins. to get out there we did something a little different.. we took a boat down the thames! yeahoo! i have been wanting to do a boat tour before i headed back home and now i can check that off the list! it was amazing! another "must do" in London! like the famous red buses, it has the double decker thing going on so we sat up on top. there are so many freaking cool things along the bank of the thames. i love it. 
we started at westminster pier, which is right across from the eye, parliament.. basically the most picturesque places in the city. my favorite spots! we headed down the river, passing the tower and under tower bridge with the big olympic rings on it! that is my favorite olympic photo spot in the city. is so cool and so london ya know? after that we passed by this building that has this huge ad looking thing of the royal family. it is still there from when they had the queens boat pageant from the jubilee which was in may. so that was cool. i love all the jubilee stuff, it makes everyone so patriotic. and all the stores have all this special edition stuff like lunch boxes, tea sets, basically everything you can think of, that is just super british and centered around the queen and super cute. i will miss it so much!!! after that we passed by the HMS belfast which is a giant battleship from world war 2. it is now a floating museum. now i think only my family knows this but i LOVE that crap. i was like freaking out and taking a ton of pictures as we passed it. it was so cool. reminded me a lot of the USS Missouri (i think it's the missouri..? mom?) that you can go on at Pearl Harbor. so freaking cool. let's see what else was there... there was a model of the Mayflower... oh and right after that was the outlet to the entrance to the olympic park! so i'm sure yall watched the opening ceremonies and saw where Beckham was riding the  speedboat in? (i know he looked super hot.... i know) yeah that's where we were that same day! kinda cool right? right across from that was the HMS ocean. holy. crap. this is a modern warship they brought up to thames for security during the olympics. if that thing doesn't scare the shiz out of you i dont know what will. it's all decked out with helicopters and weird crap that does who knows what... it was so freaking cool!!!!! i would die to go on there! but yeah basically terrorists beware! hahah. and then we were at the greenwich pier! 

so greenwich is definitely home to a lot of educational history. its where the naval academy used to be housed and where the prime meridian now is! the prime meridian, aka international dateline, was made when the railroad was installed because people needed a standard time to refer to when catching trains! kinda cool right? right as you get off the pier you see the cutty sark which is an old tea clipper ship built in the 1800s. this basically means its an old looking wooden ship with a metal hull that would go really fast. its also in really good shape. they have it dry docked and its really cool! but the real reason we went to greenwich was for the naval history museum. so that was our "highlight" i guess. in my opinion it was kind of a crappy museum. most of it was just copies of pictures of ships sailing. but i shouldn't say anything because i am just getting so spoiled.. but they did have a lot of figurines that were on the sterns of old ships.. like the stereotypical wooden mermaids on the front of the boat ya know? that was my favorite part to see. oh another fun fact. so greenwich is also an olympic site so security was INTENSE. this was just to get inside the dumb naval museum! but i heard someone talking today and apparently the uk brought home like 30,000 troops to do security here. so we went through airport security to get into a dumb museum that no one goes to. hahaha. but come to find out there was actually a luncheon in there for some people that had something to do with the olympics so yeah. but the place was a mess. scaffolding everywhere.. all these temporary bridges and bleachers. it was terrible. (and ugly). 

after that we had free time! most of the group was headed out to the olympic park.. which was probably the stupidest idea they have had this whole trip. it was the day of the opening ceremonies and they were gonna go out there?! yeah in case you wondering they didn't make it. haha they closed it all down and you had to have a ticket to the ceremonies to get in. but anyways so me and chels went off to get food! we went to the main little shopping streets that were really cute. a lot of the roads were closed off because of the olympics, but it was weird because the city honestly seems empty. i'll talk more about that in my next post. but we found another joy and i got a cute little sandwich container and cup that i can use at work! in orlando! yay! then we found the greenwich market which was super cool. it was like portobello so it had a ton of antiques... silver, crystal, old tins, stamps.. really, really neat stuff. i wish it wasn't so fragile! but we wandered and wandered and finally found a mexican place. i guess i should say we found an english mexican place. mexican food here SUCKS. but we always get so excited when we find a place because we miss it so much! hahah it was so funny though so we thought the guy was actually hispanic cause he had brown skin.. so chelsea tried asking him about corn tortillas.. yeah he didn't even know what those were. pretty sure he was arab. and when they brought out my burrito it was like they put beef chili in a tortilla. it was super soupy and nasty. and the decorations inside were definitely polynesian masks and geckos. not mexican. hahaha. so funny. 
okay so after sketchy mexican we caught the tube back into the city. out in that area the connect line is the DLR which is the Docklands Light Rail, a relatively new line. it's an overground train so you can see what you're driving through. i seriously love this area. so this is the new part of the city.. all the buildings are high tech and really nice. the river literally runs through them all with manmade canals and stuff and there are street cafes everywhere. they aren't the quaint cafes like in london london but they are still really cool and cute in a different way. i'm not describing this very well but i really liked it. it reminded me of an american city and it was really cool. mmkay i'll stop now. 
so we went back into the city and did our last london walk! it was a required one and was basically wondering through the actual "city" of London. fun fact, the city of london is only 1 square mile! it's tiny! the tiniest capitol city in the world. i technically live in westminster! (my whole life is a lie! :() but it's cool because its all built on the remains of roman london and all the legit important government stuff is in that square mile. we saw the equivalent of the supreme court building, where the great fire of the 1660s started, lots of christopher wren architecture.. all that good stuff. we also stopped in top shop and i got a sick pair of shorts. yay. 

wow this is really long. i'm sorry! after this excursion we came back to the centre, ate some dinner (bread and bananas.. lots of nutrition there) and got ready for the opening ceremonies!!! me and chelsea bought tickets to watch it on the big screen in Hyde Park. they also had a concert going on! so that's why it cost money. they had four different bands each representing a different part of Great Britain. Paolo Nutini from Scotland, Duran Duran from England, Stereophonics from Wales, and Snow Patrol from Northern Ireland. i will explain that part later. but it was so fun to get dressed up! i handed out all of the little bracelets and tiaras my mom sent me with to the kids at the centre and they wore them to wherever they went to watch the ceremonies. it was fun to see everyone get in the spirit and they were so thankful! they are all keeping their stuff for future events too. so thank you mom for making me bring that stuff! they all love you and think you are the best mom ever!! sad story.. my tattoos are lost though :( haven't seen them since fourth of july in wales. so yeah. 
anyways so we walked through hyde park to the concert and it was super intense. we got there around six and the gates had opened at 430, so we missed the paolo nutini guy. this is where the security got super intense. we seriously waited in line (or should i say "queued") for an hour and a half, at least. every single person got either a full on pat down or a wand search or went through a scanner. it was scary! then they literally emptied every single pocket of your bag onto a table and went through it. the guy even opened my wallet and went through my paper bills and coins! so you can see how this would take forever! 
then we were finally into the stage area.. it was HUGE! all the food vendors and stuff totally reminded me of a fair back in the states, it was great. we pushed our way to a pretty decent spot and posted up! oh and we also found a guy selling tattoos with flags so that was a win :) so first we saw duran duran. i'm not really into that scene so i had no idea what was going on. i really enjoyed the overweight fifty year olds getting drunk out of their minds though. it was great. they were dancing like there was no tomorrow. i wish i would've filmed it! after duran duran, we moved up more and found some americans! they were super nice! there were four of them but the two we really hung out with were 2 students from Cornell. they were both from wisconsin, one was doing research on elementary education and the boy was doing an internship (he was cuteee by the way). but they were fun! it was also really nice to be with them cause it turns out the guy, sam, had actually gotten a ticket to the dress rehearsal for the opening ceremony so he knew everything that was going on! being 5'2" it was really hard to see everything on the big screen, my neck still hurts! but it was so fun. i loved the ceremonies! it made me so proud to be british!!! then i realized.. i wasn't british. hahaha. but i loved all the pop culture references. harry potter, peter pan, mary poppins, mr. bean... and of course the queen and james bond! how funny was that! this one lady next to us was legit bawling when they showed the queen because she loves the queen so much.. kinda weird. but it was funny to ask peoples opinions back home of the opening ceremony cause i think a lot of it went straight over their heads. i was so thankful that i have gotten at least a little familiar with the culture! so i LOVED it! 

during the parade of nations, which is painfully long, stereophonics and snow patrol played. our little american group had never heard of stereophonics, and when we asked this indian guy next to us who they were he literally had a cow. i guess theyre a big deal over here. they were pretty good! but snow patrol... they were AMAZING. i didn't really have high expectations and they were SO GOOD. it was so fun! sadly at this point we had been standing for about 6 hours and it was starting to get freaking cold. also, everyone was started to get wasted. like really wasted. there was this group of australian girls next to us that were so gone. they started dancing and one of them spilled their beer all over me. i was literally dripping. needless to say i was loving life at that point. hahah but it was funny. also this drunk british guy came over and started hitting on us. good stuff. i also learned that when people are drunk they just start hooking up with each other.. so me and chelsea have this great picture of us posing and then two couples just going at it behind us. hahaha. neither of them knew each other before, basically the guy just came up, offered drink, talked for ten minutes, then they started making out. it was great. 
so they showed "team GB" come out then we decided to head. we figured we could watch the torch get lit on youtube or something. as we were walking out snow patrol started playing again and they were AMAZING so we were dancing around and stuff and this super super super drunk guy saw us and came up to me and basically couldn't stand up and was saying something about america... and yeah. somehow i got out from under him and then he wanted a picture? so i was mean and said okay i'll take your picture with my friend! hahaha sorry chelsea, basically threw her to the dogs so that i would take the picture and she'd be in it. but before i could his other friend came in. he just as drunk, maybe more, and he wanted a kiss! so as i'm taking the picture he went right in for chelsea's face... hahahahhaha best moment of my life. she ducked so he nailed her with a big wet one right on the forehead but it was SO funny. after we escaped them we were literally crying. 
so we walked home, and we happened to find a big screen in the lobby of a hotel just as the torch was getting lit! so we saw it! yay. then we came back to the centre and everyone was camped out in the kitchen and it was just the cutest thing ever! everyone was all dressed up and screaming for america and it was one of those things youll never forget ya know? they had popcorn and were sitting on the floor.. it was just great! it was an amazing day and truly a once in a lifetime opportunity! i loved it! 

i'm sorry that was so long but i don't want to forget any details! this thing is also my journal so i'm sorry you guys had to power through that. thanks for reading!!! :) much love! 

last english weekend

can you believe it!? it's my last weekend here in london! next weekend i will be in scotland and the weekend after i'll be on a plane home! how crazy is that?! before i get started make sure to scroll down to the post for friday of this weekend as well! i am little behind so i will be posting two separate entries at around the same time. look for both! the friday one is good :)
so saturday i thought i was gonna get all this stuff done, and for the most part it ended up being a totally useless day. i am really regretting it now. but i honestly wasn't feeling so good so i guess it's a good thing i layed low. so i slept in.. then me and chelsea went and got breakfast at starbucks! their menu is so funny here. super british. like the breakfast sandwich i ordered was just plain sausage on really thin english muffin type thing with ketchup. hahaha. they do have this thing called a breakfast pot though that is really good. its yogurt, really thinly sliced apples, rolled oats, and berries all mixed together. so so good. so we got that stuff then came home and ate it at the centre and watched the olympics in the kitchen! yay! we were seriously in there all day though it was terrible! i feel so bad now. haha. but then at 4 we finally went to the london museum, which we have actually been to already, and did a site assignment for our history class. so that was somewhat productive. yay us.
after that me and chelsea headed into the covent garden area because we were seeing LION KING! wahoo! one of my favorite musicals. we got food at a little cute cafe in the middle of covent garden. it was cute and super european and fun. lion king was good! not broadway. sadly. but good! rafiki was awesome.
that was saturday. sunday was our last day in our ward! it was so sad :( i will miss my ward a ton because it reminds me of senegal so much. i love all the ghanians in my ward. but it was a great meeting. one interesting thing though.. our last meeting was 'combined' so everyone was there except the primary. in this meeting they had a lesson preparing talks. kinda interesting right? you would never get that in a utah ward. there was also some arguing so that got awkward real fast. but anyways that's the last saturday and sunday! sorry this is so short but i got behind and no i have forgotten a lot of stuff.

the phantom of the olympic torch

hi guys! so you are probably thinking that i had some spooky encounter with the olympic torch today because of my title. no worries! i will explain :)
so this morning we have class! just like a normal thursday. twas fabulous. i also had my last dish crew! PRAISE THE HEAVENS! after class we had some free time! so me and chelsea wanted to get cute dresses because we are hoping to go get tea at kensington palace before we leave. so we went shopping! i love this store called joy (look it up, amazing) so we went to find one! we wanted to get away from the west end because there are so many freaking people here! so we found one over on the south bank by the tate modern. it was perfect, because we were able to get lunch at borough market! it's not as well stocked as it usually is on saturday but it still had good stuff :) i got a sandwich, and i figured this was my last time going.. so i got this chocolate cake thing i have been eyeing. oh my goodness. it was legitimately the most amazing chocolate thing i have ever had in my life. it was like mousse and cake combined because it was so soft and so freaking good. my life is complete now. so after borough we went to joy and it was so great! got lots of goodies :) hehehe. mostly stuff i can wear to church! so that is nice because that is hard to find sometimes. we were planning on going to topshop to look at shoes but we spent too much time in joy and had to get back for the torch relay!!!
the torch came down the street right next to ours today! our cute little neighborhood bayswater :) it was great! me and chelsea got there just in time to get a good spot. we stood for about thirty minutes until stuff started coming. it was kind of like a parade! there were a few buses, two with bands on them... lots of runners/bikers, and lots of vans. it was interesting to look inside and see what they were carrying! one of them had a bunch of people who were waiting for their turn to carry the torch. apparently they switch every 300 meters, which is a lot! but i don't blame them cause it's so dang hot. another van had a TON of torches inside! that was really cool to see. so yeah the torch came, we saw it for like 5 seconds and people went ape shiz crazy and it was awesome. yay! it made me so excited for tomorrow to get all decked out and go watch the opening ceremonies at hyde park! heheh.

after that we had dinner at the centre, then we were off to phantom of the opera! finally i can go to shows again! oh my gosh. guys it was so good. this is the best production i have seen here yet. ahhh. it was soooo good! i love phantom! it has been here for like 25 years! crazy to think my mom saw it in the same theatre with the original cast! i still have the songs stuck in my head. it was amazing!

so that was a short post but i had a dang good day! life is great! thanks for reading! :) 

sweating and studying

hey guys! sorry it has been a few days! i promise you haven't missed out on much! before i get started, i got my photos uploaded to the post from last week when we went to stratford and kew gardens. check it out! please? :) thanks!
so last time you heard from me i said i was hiking through kent! yeah.. that didn't happen :( our group went, but it was optional. this week all of our big stuff is due because it's basically our last full week here at the centre (next week we are going to scotland and the lake district) so i had a ton of stuff i needed to do, so i stayed home! aren't i a good student? so this was tuesday. so i woke up and did dish crew. then i took a nap. then after that i worked on my paper all afternoon!! then i did dish crew for dinner which seriously takes up your whole night. you start at 4:30 and don't get done till around eight so it really sucks. then after that i did the only exciting thing of the whole day! haha because the program screwed us up in stratford and we didn't get to see twelfth night they got us tickets to see "chariots of fire" on the west end! it was good! i wouldn't see it again but it was cool. so obviously it's about running.. so there's a track that loops out into the audience, and some people are actually seated behind the stage! it was cool. i'm sorry to say it, but the west end will never be broadway. i said this when i saw singing in the rain too. (which was awesome!) the stages are just so much smaller, the production isn't as mind-blowing... and let's be honest, no little girl (or boy) dreams of growing up and singing on broadway in the UK like they do in the states! i think that's a really american notion. but back to my original topic- chariots of fire was cool because it was centered around the olympics in france right after world war one so it definitely got people all stoked for that. especially if you were british. at the end for the final bow all the actors came out in the uk team apparel for the olympics. so that part was cool!! and that was seriously my whole day! how sad is that?

picadilly circus! not quite times square.. 

 i did write a pretty good four page paper though.. so here's hoping that pays off and i keep my scholarship! that's my only motivation for this trip. haha if i didn't have to keep that i would blow everything off.
wednesday! so we had class on wednesday and not  a coach trip because we didn't have one this week. okay well i guess that's sort of a lie because we are going to greenwich tomorrow. but that's different. anywho. so class! yeah that was super fun. after that me and chelsea went down by notting hill to try this chain called nando's. its technically portuguese but its basically just a chicken place. people love it! i guess what makes them famous is their sauce. it's called piri piri if that means anything to anyone? but its like a spicy tomato sauce that's a little creamy? it comes in a few different variations and you choose which one you like. it was pretty good! it's definitely a local popular chain so i'd say i felt all local and cool and whatever. nando's and wagamama's are london's two main food chains i'd say. after that i went to get my olympic tickets! i rode the tube over to edgware road to westminster city college where the company i got them thru, cosport, is set up. i was surprised to see a crazy line! but i got in and didn't think it'd be a big deal. an hour and a half later i realized i wasn't gonna make it in time to get back for my extra credit lecture! so i ducked out of line and decided i'd have to rough it some other time. 
so i got back to the centre and i had a little surprise! my friend brynne and her mom were in the lobby! brynne is a girl i met winter semester that has helped me a lot with the disney program. she has been cinderella for two summers and she's the one that logged into the system to tell me i was working in fantasyland! she is such a sweetheart! but she is here working for the olympics!! so i talked to her for a while and it was awesome! made my day :) 
after that we had a lecture from this guy who has studied at oxford and cambridge. he was very smart. he talked about the british identity today and it was really interesting. it was also interesting because he was pretty conservative.. and you definitely don't find that here in britain! also it was extra credit so yayyyy.
that lasted like an hour then we decided to go get frozen yogurt on queensway! we didn't have dinner at the centre because thais was cooking little finger foods for this reception that night with the guy that gave us the lecture. after that we were planning on riding bikes through hyde park, but the freaking terminal was broken! you're probably wondering what the heck i'm talking about. so barclays (the bank) sponsors these bikes all throughout the city that you can rent and then return wherever you ride it to. it's really convenient! and if you only use if for 30 minutes it's free, so we were hoping to ride them thru hyde park, to the opposite side where the hyde park ward is located! but the little rental computer wasn't working. so we walked! it was lovely. bloody hot. but lovely. so then we got to the hyde park ward! you are probably confused again haha i am not doing so good at explaining today. so the byu centre for european studies is celebrating 10 years so they are doing this series and inviting the public so they can see our facilities. this was the first one! it was at the hyde park chapel (which just got renovated and looks great!) and it had the guy that lectured us earlier in the day talking about political and religious liberty in britain. cool stuff! it was especially interesting for me to hear what he thought of the integration of islam into the society. very interesting. but it was funny because at the little reception all 3 programs that are in england right now came. us, the film studies program, and the cambridge group. basically we are all the stereotypical byu students (for the most part) in goofy modest clothes, the film group is all the really liberal artsy kids that don't really fit in (hahahah sorry but it's true) and the cambridge kids are all the ambitious snotty RMs that aren't married yet. haha sorry but that's the truth! it was an interesting dynamic it was fun to watch. after that we headed back to the centre, i read like 200 pages of books i didn't really want to read... it was great! the end!

hyde park chapel and visitors centre! 

before i end this lovely little post i just want to get something across.. heat in london in NOT FUN! it got up to almost 90 degrees today and it is straight up miserable! the centre has no air conditioning except in the classroom... and who wants to stay in the centre anyways? also it's humid so you just feel sticky all the time. plus there are approximately 1 million extra people here now because of the olympics so it's crowded and just no fun! the tube is terrible! ....but i still love it here! seriously i don't want to leave so soon :( but i will be happy to see rain clouds and the mid sixties :) anyways hope everyone has a great day! i will blog about today later tonight! much love! 

that's just not cricket!

NEWS FLASH! everyone! my mom is a genius! i tricked my computer into letting me upload pictures! i have added them to the posts 'art galleries and covent gardens' and 'i did not see a woman in black...' you can click on the links over here ----> or just keep scrolling down! i am in the process of adding pictures from my days from stratford and kew gardens as well. i will keep you updated! :)
so today we went to a cricket match!! how cool is that?! normally we have class on mondays, but this week we will have class on wednesday and thursday instead. this morning at 9 we had a lecture from a english guy that professor jacoby is friends with. they both edit a journal on german politics and it just so happens that this guy is an amateur cricket player! so he taught us about the history of the game and the rules, it was super interesting! according to him, cricket is the second largest sport in the world! next to soccer of course:) but because it was spread by the british empire it has basically reached every corner of the world. it is super popular in india, which accounts for a huge chunk of the world's population.  and apparently australia, england, and south africa are the best international teams right now. it was really cool to learn about! it's kind of crazy to think there is more to professional sports than the NBA and NFL. 
after his lecture concluded we went off to the cricket match! it was out by this place called vauxhall.it was in a pretty big stadium called the kia oval and it was way nice! i seriously felt like i was back home at a really classy baseball game! i loved it! except instead of hot dogs and coke you have fish and chips and pims! i freaking love england! we had amazing seats. so we were at an international match... it was the number one and number two seeds in the world, england and south africa. now this is gonna sound crazy but cricket matches usually take five days to complete! we came in on day four. basically south africa was tromping the british and there was no hope for their win. it was kind of pointless for them to even be playing at that point. but it was so cool! although the english people would disagree, i would have to say cricket is very, very uneventful. i mean really, a game takes five days. that's ridiculous! and every day they stop for lunch and twelve and tea at 3:40. this kills me. can you imagine stopping a football game for a nice spot of tea? hahahaha. so basically what i'm trying to say here is that cricket is a social event! it's a place where you go hang out with your friends and hope that your team wins even though you are paying more attention to your beer than the game. that was what i got from it! i'm not even gonna try to explain what the rules were because it is bizarre. i'll let you guys figure that one out! 
so after about two hours at the cricket match me and chelsea headed back into the city because she had a doctors appointment. no she isn't sick! she just got into the nursing program and has to get all these vaccinations or she gets kicked out! so we went to a little clinic off of oxford street. before that we grabbed some lunch! we found this spanish tapas place that had gluten free stuff (Chels has siliacs, ciliacs? seliacs? oh well, haha) and it was so good! she got paella, i got a salad, and we split these teeny little chicken skewers. oh and i finally got my elderflower water! sooooo yummy! everyone must try it! then we went to her appointment. sadly we have to go back wednesday but mostly everything went good:) after that we somehow stumbled upon this crazy candy store. it was all american candy, which kills me because american candy is soooo nasty compared to the candy here. i was embarrassed they were even selling hershey bars! anyone who spends money on that here is insane! the other thing i thought was hilarious is that in their candy store they also include some of our cereals! they had cheerios, froot loops, captain crunch and lucky charms! hahah so basically that is not a suitable breakfast for the english. they also had a ton of funny stuff, like twinkies, pop tarts, and a bunch of our soda! mountain dew, rootbeer, creme soda, vanilla coke. it was so funny that to them its such a sugary treat and to us those are everyday things. kind of explains why we're all so dang fat! 
after that, we stumbled upon dorothy perkins! completely by accident. mom, i hate to break it to you, but it was a complete dud. it's like cheap forever 21 for old ladies. if you saw it in person you wouldn't like it. so either you are looking at a totally different store or they just have a freakishly cute website. sorry to disappoint! 
after that we were gonna try and go do rowboats at regent park or hyde park. it was SUCH a beautiful day i can't even tell you! it's so weird for it to be hot outside! but we ran out of time cause i am still on dang dish crew :( so i did that. dinner was good though! so that was a success. after dinner we watched one of our movies for our european history class, then i wrote my paper on it. i also skyped my mom and dad because my tea set arrived home! yay! :) everything made it intact! i also was talking to one of my friends that has worked in disney before... she looked up where i am gonna be working this fall!!!!!! drumroll please.... i am gonna be in FANTASYLAND!!!!! in Magic Kingdom!!! how lucky am i!?!?!?!? i am so so so so so so excited! i was kinda worried i would end up in a crappy resort but i am SO happy!!!!!!!! ahhhh!!!!!!! you guys i am so happy. like i said, people hate me here cause i get so dang excited. hahah.  
i also talked to my dad, diane (hi diane!), and my mimi and grandpa. i miss everyone so much but i am so happy i am here! i am so incredibly blessed i can't even wrap my head around it! i am seriously the luckiest kid in the world! i just want to say thank you everyone for supporting me and i love you all so much! ahhh! i am so thankful! please feel free to message me on facebook or talk to me in anyway because i love hearing from back home! :) i love you all so much! tomorrow we are hiking through kent! i will be sure to fill you all in! 
ps sorry no pictures, usb cord isn't working again :( have a great day! 

sunday squared

so i know this is a day late... but this is my little entry for yesterday! yesterday was sunday (i know, thanks captain obvious), so it was time to head out for church at mitcham! it was kind of a sad day because for most of the meetings we thought that this was gonna be our last day in mitcham! next week our train line is going to be closed for upgrades, and the week after we will be in scotland. but we found a new way to get there so next week will be our last week :). church was great! i love everything about it and will definitely miss my sweet little ghana ward.
so after church we decided to do something a little different.. we (and by we i mean me and like five other people, not the whole group) went to evensong at westminster abbey! this isn't eucharist where they take the sacrament and whatnot, but there is lots of singing and praying, two lessons from the bible and a sermon from a reverend. it was a very, very interesting experience. it was also nice because you have to pay to get into westminster abbey, but if you are participating in a worship service it's free. so we kind of cheated the system. so anyways! i kept trying to imagine that i was an investigator looking for a church so i could kind of maybe feel how investigators feel when they come to one of our wards. but their service is so different i couldn't even really imagine! there is one guy who kind of leads the service and also sings/chants back and forth with the choir. there was a lot of singing. it sounds like the stereotypical monk chants but they give you a program and they are actually singing in english. it's really beautiful because of the acoustics but i feel like it's all really repetitive.. nothing that really gets to your heart like so many hymns do for me. after that and some prayers you say with the lead chanter dude, another head dude goes up to one of the fancy poems and gave us 'the first lesson' which was found in Job. i had my scriptures with me, so i followed along. unlike us, when they give a 'lesson' they are actually just reading from the bible.  but it is definitely not the king james bible!! it was so weird! they have made it all modern! so they don't say thou or thy or anything like that. i feel like it lost so much meaning and sacredness. for instance instead of saying come unto me, they would say come to me. i don't know it's not a huge difference but it made a big difference to me! 
more prayers, singing, another lesson from the book of romans... then there was a sermon! this was also interesting to me. it was kind of similar to someone giving a talk in church.. except it was a reverend.. and the reverend was a girl! it's kind of like if a bishop was a girl! so that was odd. she said some good stuff though... they just don't have the big picture! it's really interesting to see how they interpret things. so i am really glad i went! but at the same time i wouldn't go back and do it. kind of a one time experience ya know? basically the church is true. amen.
so after that i went home and did dish crew.. yikes. i volunteered to do sink duty and it was nasty haha. yuck yuck yuck. after that i did two london walks! all of the stuff for that class is due friday so i need to get those done! so we did the kensington gardens and hyde park walk. we walked probably about 5 miles!! my feet are still killing me! but it was beautiful! and now i can say i have literally seen every corner of hyde park! peter pan statue, the serpentine, the flower walk, the rose walk, diana memorial stuff all over the place, all the victoria and albert memorials, the serpentine, everything! i love kensington gardens. mostly because of the association with peter pan... but also it's just beautiful. i think my favorite part is the italian gardens, the big fountains :) so pretty.
surprisingly we actually ran into members in the park! we were walking around with our text book that had a big BYU stamp on it and taylor was in a suit and tie so they recognized us and started talking to us. they are a young couple, the girl is going to graduate school here. how cool is that? so that was neat!   we walked through the park for almost 4 hours! hahaha. so we got out at like 10:30. oh! it was also cool to see all the final stages of the olympic stuff going up! there are some events in hyde park so there is a big tent and stuff! everything is getting so olympic-y! it's so fun. but then it was back to the centre and off to bed! it was a really great sunday and it was fun to get out of the house and do something different. i will hopefully be posting later today with todays activities! love to all! :)

BEST DAY OF MY LIFE

hi guys!! so i know the title is a little dramatic but i seriously just had the best day of my life!!!!! i am on the craziest high right now and feeling so blessed!!!!! 
so this morning was our tour of parliament! since it's saturday we have no breakfast so me and chelsea got up extra early to go do portobello market and hopefully find some breakfast. portobello market is the coolest thing ever! my favorite market so far!! it has the coolest antiques, it's HUGE, so many nooks and crannies.. i love it!! we didn't have much time because we had to make it back to the centre to meet to leave for parliament.. but i did have time to buy a first edition winnie the pooh! with the original illustrations! i know it sounds silly but i just love winnie the pooh and i know that will always be important to me. we were running super short on time so we dropped in a gelato shop and grabbed a croissant and hot chocolate then headed back to the centre. on our way there we actually ran into the stragglers that the group had left so we hooked up with them then got on the tube to parliament!
parliament was AMAZING. it is a must see!!!!! i love all the political stuff like how DC is so i was all about this. it blows my mind how many crazy traditions still hold in the british parliament. it is definitely not America! instead of the house and the senate they have the house of lords and the house of commons. there is so much history it's insane. it is so cool to learn because if you think about it, it's our history too! even if youre not of english descent, this is where our government really came from. it's so so cool for me to see the similarities and differences in our system and theirs. also it was just amazing to be in the building. it is so ornate and symbolic, much like our own capitol.. but even more so!!!  also it was something i have never done before so yeah. oh my goodness it was just amazing. that alone would've have made today the best day ever. but it just kept getting better!
after that me and chelsea had decided we were going to head out to do the 'olympic' tram and see the olympic park. but we were hungry! so we went to borough market first. i am so glad we did!! we had unlimited time today so we explored a lot more and WOW. that place is amazing! we found some crazy stuff. like one of the exotic meat stands.. they had kangaroo, ostrich, zebra, camel, llama, and elk and bison! the last two made me feel at home :) but we got some really really good sandwiches from this italian frenchy thing and it was so good. then i got an almond croissant for a treat and dang it was good. that place is so amazing. 
finally we were off for the olympic experience! i was dying i was so excited! first we headed out to the emirates air line tram, which just opened this month. its basically like a gondola that takes you 300 feet up in the air over the thames river! it was AMAZING. again, this alone would have made my day the best one yet but it just kept getting better!!! the view was so beautiful and it was just a surreal experience. one of the guys we shared a tram with was actually the guy that drives the van that follows the olympic torch relay! he was so sweet and enthusiastic and you could tell he was just ecstatic to be a part of the experience! oh my goodness it was so amazing. DAD- at one end of the tram they have this little fake beach set up with a pulley system where you can wakeboard! hahahah it was the goofiest thing i have ever seen, and i was actually tempted to come back and do it! untilll i looked down in the river water. there is no way i am getting in there. i would turn into a mutant! but i thought you would like to know that! 
after that we got on the tube again and headed to the olympic park! so you can't go in it unless you are staff at this point, and you can only go in it during the games if you have a ticket (which i will be doing in about two weeks, get ready!!! :)) so we had to kind of fake it. the olympic park is literally right next to this super super nice mall, it's the westfield stratford city. very nice and brand new. the store closest to the park is john lewis, which is basically nordstrom of the UK. it's the official carrier of all the olympic goods. if you go up to the top floor they have their olympic shop and this huge glass viewing deck. it was amazing. we could see the orbit (the big metal lookin twisty thing that arches over the stadium), the stadium itself, the place where they swim... everything in the park! it was so cool to see all the workers and signs.. i love the spirit of the olympics!!! like as soon as we got off the tube we saw staff with a sign waiting for the sierra leone team! how cool is that? AH I LOVE MY LIFE.
so we had done all we could there, so we headed back into the city for more portobello market! this time we actually walked the whole thing. most stuff was closing down but it was amazing anyways. i got a couple fun pairs of earrings and a shirt in a boutique. portobello is so cool! they have the coolest silverware, china, maps, brooches... all the good stuff. i love it. 
after that we had been planning on going to phantom of the opera tonight, so we headed to the west end to get student rush tickets. we got there and they don't do student rush! they didn't have any normal tickets left either so yeah. that was sad. but it was short lived... half of the girls with us went to mamma mia and i decided to go to BATMAN. there was a showing coming up at the coronet, which is the theatre right by our place! the old cute one. so we booked it back there, ran into a pret-a-manger and got sandwiches and fruit and got in!!! OH. MY. GOSH. this was the highlight of my day. dark knight rises is the most amazing thing i have ever ever ever seen!!!!!!!!! i went with chelsea and megan, megan was literally bawling at the end. (Tears of joy). i was sick to my stomach i was so emotional. i also kept punching megan (sorry megan), because apparently that's what i do when i get excited. when it was over we were cheering and screaming and so happy. apparently british people don't applaud when they like a movie because afterwards some old guys were like 'was that you that were clapping and cheering?' hahaha. so we didn't even notice we were the only ones. oh! also it was kind of funny, they had an intermission in the middle of the movie! kind of odd but cute haha. but oh my gosh that was by far THE BEST movie i have ever seen!!!!! i still can't get over it!! 
we sat in the theatre and thought about how amazing life was and talked about the movie for about 20 minutes then decided we should find some ice cream. everywhere was closed but we found this sketchy grocery store and they had ben & jerrys! so we got a mini tub of phish phood and split it! it was the best of the best !
I AM SO HAPPY and i am so incredibly blessed! oh and ALSO i got a card from my mimi today! thank you mimi i loved it!! tell grandpa and killer hello :) i loved killers little paw print in the bottom! this also would have made my day all by itself! i love hearing your stories with Dee! ahhh i just can't get over how much i love life and i love london and my friends and my family and yeah! thank you so much everyone! i hope everyone is amazing and my advice.. go see batman!!!!! and come to london! much love!! 

shakespeare, shakespeare, shakespeare.

hi guys. i'm literally gonna barf if i do one more thing that is shakespeare related.
in other news, today was a great laid back day! hahah. so i had to wake up early to do dish crew which was just marvelous. glad that only lasts a week. then the whole group went to the imperial war museum. we have a site assignment there so i will go, but this morning i was starting to get sick again :( so i stayed home and slept. i woke up at eleven, made myself some lunch, then i was off to richard III at the globe!
yes.. the globe again! now don't get me wrong the globe is super cool and the plays are super, super well down. but.. when you have to stand for approximately three hours.. nothing is fun. let's get real. i dunno what i would stand three hours for. yikes. but there were some highlights! one of the actors in the play was actually the guy that plays barty crouch (senior) in Harry Potter! Yahoo! and the guy that played richard III was really funny. always gotta look for the silver lining :)
so i left the play a little early cause i had to be back for dish crew. (i'm not complaining, felt so gooood to sit down on the tube). we had this crazy authentic brazilian dish. it was like meat stew with rice and then side of fancy cut oranges and fried bananas. it was kind of fun! i like that kind of stuff that's all authentic. i couldn't go out tonight because dish crew gets done after all the shows start :( lucky for me sweet chelsea stayed home with me so we decided to watch a movie! we watched shakespeare in love. (can you see a common theme here?) it was good! i love gwyneth paltrow. it also has the lady who played umbridge in it. and the twin brother of the lead is voldemort. so basically what i'm saying is that once you get into british theatre EVERYONE is tied to harry potter somehow. hahah. then we went downstairs and everyone was getting back from wicked and matilda and the woman in black.. and we decided to have a big manicure party! it was kind of cute. it's nice to have something kind of normal in the schedule ya know?
that's my day! it was super boring and i probably should've done more but i am feeling tons tons better. tomorrow we are planning on hitting portobello market, touring parliament, doing the olympic village, and hopefully seeing phantom of the opera!
thank you for taking time to read! i miss you all very much. also wanted to say my thoughts and prayers are with those effected by the shooting in aurora yesterday. what a terrible thing... everyone be careful! love you lots!

kew and stratford-upon-avon

hello peoples! sorry missed yall yesterday. we got home kind of late and i was so tired! and i had like 90 pages of reading for class today so... yeah blogging got postponed! but here i am! 


so yesterday was a wednesday which means.... coach trips! yesterday we went to shakespeare's homeplace, stratford-upon-avon. some people wonder why the long name... haha i will explain :) the town itself is called stratford. it is located on the river avon (which means 'river' in celtic)... throw it all together... stratford-upon-avon! stratford on the avon river. yay. i'm sure you're so glad you know that now. haha. so yeah we started the day with packing our lunches which i always think is so funny. it's tradition that we turn on mtv in the kitchen while we do it and it's typically eighties music and it's just o funny. i feel like we are in a scene out of sitcom or something hahahah a bunch of college kids packing these little sandwiches in the middle of london while watching these wacko eighties music videos. that probably isn't funny to anyone else but oh well. hahaha. 
okay so it took like two hours to get there so we decided to break up the trip a little bit. our first stop was warwick castle! this place has the most interesting history. so the site has had a fort of some sort on it for like 900 years which is pretty crazy. that's like anglo-saxon time. eventually it became the property of the earl of warwick, who during the war of the roses was the eighth richest man in britain. it is believed he was worth about 60 billion pounds or something. which is a ton right?! sooo fast forward to the 1920s. the earl has a lot of money he doesn't know what to do with, so he goes to hollywood to make it big as a movie star! the guy was an absolutely horrible actor, so no one would hire him. despite the fact he wasn't making any money he kept throwing all these extravagant parties and getting in with all the stars... and by about 1960 all of his money was gone! he had to declare bankruptcy! he ended up having to sell this huge castle.. and he only sold it for 2 million pounds!!! that still sounds like a ton of money but you seriously need to see this place. it is more than a hundred acres, it has this ancient castle on it... it came fully furbished with old armor and 4 skeletons of prehistoric irish elk... this place is worth wayyyy more. but i guess he was desperate? so yeah it was sold to madame tussauds for 2 million pounds! 

i know it's weird that madame tussauds bought it, but they did a pretty good job turning into a total tourist destination. it's so funny it really reminded me of disneyland. they have hidden speakers everywhere so there is always sound effects and background music.. hahah it's hilarious. they also of course have wax figures everywhere. by the way... i've decided wax figures are totally creepy. not a fan. but they have cool exhibits on like witches and torture and princesses and all sorts of stuff that tourists love ya know? so they did an awesome job.
right when we got there we started with this little tour on the defense and attack strategies that would have been used at warwick. i say 'would have' because no one was ever dumb enough to attack the castle. this place was brutal. they had it all set up so basically any way you can think of dying is a possibility. they would dump hot liquid and sand on you.. dump dead animals with deadly disease on you.. trap you in a narrow hallway with flying sharp things that would dismember you.. they had archers that could shoot like 15 arrows a minute which was a big deal.. they had acid.. it was just miserable. but cool to hear about. haha.  
after that tour they launched a real trebuchet! the only one that still operates! a trebuchet is the giant sling shot thing you see in the movies that launches big rocks and fireballs. our guides told us that yes, they really did launch fireballs, as well as animals both alive and dead, and dead enemies! how terrible is that? yucky. i guess the items get going at like 150 mph so it makes quite an impact and yeah.. pretty traumatizing. it was pretty cool to see one in action!
after that they had a birds of prey show which i thought was really random and funny. but it was cool! they had two bald eagles that all the europeans went absolutely BONKERS over. it was hilarious.. but they were huge and beautiful birds so i can see why. but also america is just the shiz so of course they love our eagle. duh. 
then we had some free time! so we walked around the towers and stuff. it was the usual castle stuff. i know that sounds so terrible and i hate saying that.. but seriously most of the castles are about the same after you have seen like 4. they're stone. they have really narrow staircases. they're not very pretty unless you're looking at them from the outside. the end. oh my gosh that's terrible that i just said that. but it's true! 
so we were off to stratford after that! we munched our cute little lunches on the bus on our way. our first stop was anne hathaway's cottage. this place kind of cracked me up. it's a total joke! anne only lived there like the first four years of her life and shakespeare was probably never there. and only two rooms in the house were actually part of the house when he was alive. so yeah. but it is super pretty! it's a cute little old cottage with the thatched roof and waddle and daub.. i'm sure everyone has seen pictures. the prettiest part is probably the garden... which was planted in the late 1800s. haha. definitely not shakespeare's time. but it is cool that those still rooms are still there. 

it was super super rainy so we cut our time in the gardens a little  short and headed to the main part of stratford, where shakespeare's actual birthplace is!! now this was legit. it's the house that he lived in until he was married. it has the room he was born in, the shop his dad worked in (he was a glovemaker), and all that! it was actually really cool! and to top if off the house is freakin cute :) haha so that's always a plus! after you exit the house they have these actors that literally have every piece shakespeare ever wrote memorized. you can ask them to recite anything and they know it. how crazy is that? i think i'd rather die than memorize all of shakespeare's works. sorry shakespeare lovers. also there was this guy in the house that would recite poems.. he was so funny. he was kind of a loony old man and he liked that we were young and friendly so he started just reciting all these poems for us. his favorites were from this book that was a bunch of famous soliloquies and poems from the perspective of a cat. so he recited this poem that was hamlet's famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy as if it were a cat... it was so funny we were dying. just imagine a wacky old british man telling us a cat poem in shakespearean style. hahahha i still laugh thinking about it

the main part of stratford around the birthplace was so cute, but we had one last stop we had to make. trinity church! this is where shakespeare, his wife anne, and their children and childrens hubbies are buried. and it may or  may not have been where he married his wife. a bunch of churches claim that title. but it was neato. and i actually was allowed to take pictures in that church! my usb wire is still not connecting all the way so i can't import photos.. but i will keep trying!! 

after that we got to back downtown to grab some dinner and explore. of course everything was closed. everything closes so dang early here! but we went into a pub/cafe thing and it was SO GOOD. we chose it cause it had gluten free stuff and chelsea and siliacs disease (i know i spelled that one wrong. my bad). i got my favorite- turkey, brie, and cranberry baguette toasted! it was amazing!!! oh my goodness. i was a happy camper. then it was back on the bus to london! in our class we have been studying twelfth night for our shakespeare unit.. so for the ride home we watched she's the man!! hahahah. betcha didn't know she's the man follows a shakespeare plot! it was hilarious to watch with our professors cause they just thought it was ridiculous. 
after that it was reading and time for bed! another wednesday in the books!


then it was today! woke up and had class. woo hoooo! so exciting. then i had a peanut butter and honey and mailed some postcards, then we were off to kew gardens! kew is a suburb of london and it's really cute. the gardens are the national gardens and they are super cool. they are like 300 acres so it's a huge setup. it has the largest seed bank in the world. it also has these really cool glass houses (green houses) that are the oldest victorian glass houses in the world. they have a palm house, a water lilly house, a temperate house.. they have so much stuff it's insane. we didn't have time to do everything because i started dish crew tonight! so we did the canopy walk which was cool. they have these metal bridges you can hike to the top of and walk through the treetops. then we went through some of the glass houses... it was very cool. sorry this is so boring and not detailed compared to all the things i just wrote about from yesterday! 
 

i came back and did dish crew for the first time. we rotate every week so that everyone helps. it's really not a big deal! all that cleaning stuff is like stress relief for me so it was kind of nice. (i know, typical girl thing right). tonight we had beef korma with rice. twas good. then we cleaned and washed dishes and all that jazz and now i'm in the servery with all the boys watching the UK's version of espn. hahaha. we are watching the UK US basketball game and we are up by like 40 points. no big deal. america rocks... nothing new there right :) but today and yesterday were great! sorry i probably bored you to death but this is basically like my journal so i am trying to retain all the detail! 
tomorrow we are going to the imperial war museum and richard III at the globe. standing again :/ yikes. so i will post again then! see ya later!