What a Disagreeable Surprise.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

St Alban's & Cambridge & Southwark Walk

Last week we took a trek to St Alban's Cathedral and then sauntered over to the beautiful campus of Cambridge. Cambridge was so breath-taking that my eyes were glued to all the buildings. Hence, very little photos of the University.

St Alban's :: Jill & Hali

Light Candles for healing :: Hannah

Cambridge

My favorite part of Cambridge (and arguably my favorite part of this semester) was attending evensong in King's College Chapel at Cambridge. Not only was the choir phenomenal, but we were in the most stunning structure of architecture I've ever stood in. Like I mentioned before, I was too enthralled to take photos so please, please hop over to Google and type in King's College Chapel. Then wander to YouTube and search for King's College Choir.

The photo on the right is King Henry VIII. Check out his right hand.

About a hundred years ago, a student played a prank and replaced Henry's sceptre with a chair leg.

The daughter-tree of Sir Isaac Newton's infamous apple tree

SouthWark walk

The Tower of London and Tower Bridge

Inside the Globe Theatre

The Millennium Bridge and St Alban's across the Thames

Skate Park

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Tower of London / London Wall Walk

Tower of London

Asian eyes

Window somewhere in the Tower of London :: Sitting in the prisoner cell

Jenna, Hali, Hannah

Tori, Jenna, Tiffany, Andrew, Abbie, Hannah, Hali

Trajan :: If only that tourist would get out my photo of the London Wall

St. Olave's Church

Christ's Church

London - first days

All right?

Here are some of my observations having moved to the Motherland:

Jet lag is real. Jet lag is horrible. Over the course of 60 hours with only 3 hours of sleep, my body went through the following stages:
- low energy
- manageable lack of mental control
    - droopy eyes and loss of fine motor skills
        - no energy and the mind decides that sidewalks/tile floors are adequate resting places
          - zombie
            - crazy
              - angry
                - pleasantly content and not a care in the world
The recovery time took about 4 days and I presented a wild first impression for my bunk-mates.

It has been a week and I still have yet to see anything that remotely resembles a pick-up truck. Speaking of vehicles, look right. Then look right again. Drivers here are ruthless.

I always thought I was good with directions until now. Turns out that it wasn't my intellect, it was the mountains. Now I am at the mercy of the Tube.

Because of the Harry Potter movies, I thought I was pretty decent at understanding the British accent. I was naive. This was learned early on as I must have looked like Elle Woods stepping into her first class at Harvard to my taxi driver. He dropped me off here, to my new home:

Sunrise from the hall window

Church/School

Across the street neighbors

Kate Middleton and I are basically BFFs already. On day 2 in London, some friends and I were walking through Hyde Park (shown below) and we happened across Kate and Prince George taking a jaunt through the park which is essentially their backyard. It doesn't get much better than that!

"Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains?" -Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

In Hyde Park we tried to find the dreamy, yet horrific, Robo-Darcy in The Serpentine, but we found out that he only swam those waters for one day last summer.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/video/2013/jul/08/mr-darcy-statue-london-serpentine-video

Down the street from us are the Royal Prince Albert Memorial and Royal Prince Albert Hall