london, adieu

Well, I made it home finally

The flight was long but thankfully British Airways helped make it shorter by never saying no to the question "Can I have another glass of white wine?". Let's just say I slept for a few hours on the flight. In all seriousness, if you ever must fly and British Airways is a possibility, go for it. Britain may still be a third world country but they figured out how to do air travel. For example, we flew coach and for lunch they served us baked lemon salmon with mashed potatoes and white wine (alcohol is free on BA). I am sure the poor people that flew on Delta had to choose between chicken parmigian or lasagna. Anyways, all gloating aside, I am working very hard to get back on EST. I called my job to see if I was on the schedule and no I wasn't, so I may not have a job anymore...but I guess that's alright too. I really haven't had a "summer break" or any sort of long break since Summer of '04. Last summer I took four classes and went straight into Fall semester and by the time Christmas rolled around I was completely exhausted.

Thanks to everyone who read my blog over the past five weeks. Sorry for the lack of blog the last week or so, it was like the end of summer camp where everyone has completely overdrawn their sleep debt and can't sit still without falling asleep.

paris vids

here are some Paris videos

wow, a post!

The girls and I went shopping today for the outfits we'll wear tomorrow night to the Rocky Horror Show. I'm not going to lie,I was in a really bad mood. I was hungry, I had a migraine, the crowds were too thick and I was about to murder someone to the beat of the crappy techno blaring out in the store we were in. Not to mention the sizing of clothes here is really messed up. They never use the same sizing. For example, H&M sizes their shirts from 32-40. The dresses are 3-20 (but 20 means USA 14) and then the pants are done like guys pants 30x34 but that doesn't mean that it means inches. Trust me, 30x34 is in millimeters. Even though I took ten minutes just staring in confusion at the shirt tags at H&M I was able to find some cute tank tops priced at 5£ each (thank you God, cheap clothing in London!).

Yesterday we went to Westminster Abbey for our british literature field trip. Photography was prohibited, but being the rebel journalist I am I snuck a few photos. Then last night I went on a Jack the Ripper tour with the psychology class instead of writing my essay for Shakespeare. I stayed up late talking to Della in her room and then to Matt on the phone instead of reading Richard III for Shakespeare. Wow, it's just like being in college back home :)

Anyways, here are some pictures. Sorry i've been holding out on you lately but with all the procrastinating (read: socializing) i've been doing I was getting behind on school work.

The pictures are sort of an amalgamation of the past few days.


The Al Jazeera conference is going on at the University of Westminster. What is even weirder to me than this coincidence is that the Iraqis living on my floor were speaking fluent spanish in the kitchen last night.


This is what happens when you spend too much time at the British Library. We call it "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, boob no evil".

Westminster Abbey (prohibited photos)

Dylan Thomas is favorite!

More authors I got to walk on in the Poet's corner.

I didn't really like the inside of Westminster Abbey. I think the inside of St. Paul's cathedral is 100x more gorgeous and smells better (westminster abbey smells like a high school art room when they do the pottery unit).


Tony Blair lives back there somewhere


Westminster area

Jack the Ripper Tour

The spot where one woman was gutted and had her throat slashed and uterus removed. Yeah, we went out to dinner after.

Where the prositutes would drink their gin and then get whisked away by Jack to certain mutilated death. This was in the movie From Hell with Johnny Depp (all roads lead back to Johnny Depp).

Southwark

Let's start this blog off right with a picture of me and an elephant


Our field trip for my Shakespeare class was to the Tower of London and to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. The tower was historical and gorgeous, mainly because the crown jewels are held there. In fact, they have these neat people movers that go by the jewels on both sides to keep the crowd moving. Rachel and I kept riding them because the jewels are so big they don't even look real. It is a good thing they are encased in glass because our drool would have made quite a mess on all that velvet. Incredible. I'd have pictures but the British seem to be very particular about no photography inside royal places.


A Google Image search for 'Crown Jewels' gave me this photo of the Imperial State Crown and some other very interesting images...


The outer walls of the Tower of London. There was going to be a music concert that night which we named (appropriately) 'Moatstock' (the official name is 'London Summer Music Fest' or something equally uncreative)


Inside the gates of the Tower of London, you will find the 'White Tower'. The basement was where you got to pick your torture...will it be manacles, the rack, or Barry Manilow?


The site of the scaffolding where Anne Boleyn was beheaded. King Henry VIII (who I walked on) decided that she was too good to die on the ordinary corner where they chopped normal people's heads off and built her a scaffold inside the tower.


This is Tower Bridge. It is right outside of the Tower of London. Do not confuse it with London Bridge, or any of the other 4,000 bridges that cross the Thames in the city of London.


Note the obscene amount of bridges. Also I am on a bridge taking this picture.


This is one of the Queen's guards at the Tower. They are really just retired policemen and army generals who get to live there and do tours. This guy was pretty amused that we wanted pictures of him.


and this guy loves his job. He was so hilarious. In case you're wondering, the letters on the front of his uniform stand for 'Elizabeth the 2nd, Royal Queen' but he tried to convince us that it was 'Elizabeth the 2nd, 'R (as in 'our') Queen. He also said his "R"s like "W"s.




Millenium Bridge. I am not sure if it is named after the year 2000 or if it is the millionth bridge built here.


Ah, the Globe Theatre. I will be partaking in the play Titus Andronicus here. For five bucks, I get to stand for three hours right in front of the stage. Yes, they still call it 'Groundling' seating


The gate in front of the Globe.

British Museum and Library

First of all, I just want to say congratulations to Matt, who ran the Peachtree this morning. Secondly, Happy Fourth! No one really gives a damn about it here, obviously because we're not in the US. Isn't it funny how everyone celebrates their independence from Britain. Poor Britain.

This morning we had class from 8:30-11:30 and then after lunch it was off on our field trip. Today our teacher chose the British Library and Museum. We rode the circle line to Picadilly and then hopped off at Russel Square (Virginia Woolf territory). We went to the British Library first.

The first exhibit was a journalism exhibit. I took photos and no one said anything, but a girl in our group was told to quit taking photos. That doesn't make any sense to me, how can you not take photos in a journalism exhibit? Anyway, they had this paper out in front



Basically it is just about the London "heat wave". I think it got up to 89 degrees F yesterday and now everyone is freaking out. London, if you can't take the heat then get out of the kitchen. Or invent air conditioning.


Journalism Exhibit: Good old fashioned advertising. I like the way they think.


King George's Library

On to the British Museum...
The museum looked like a palace and had the neatest roof on the inside. It was see through and like 500 ft. in the air. It was huge inside.




The Rosetta Stone @ British Museum

If you look closely, you can see me in the reflection





An exhibit on the written Arabic word...creatively entitled "Word Art"
This was just a quote on the wall, I thought it was very moving.


Lots of pretty headless things in the Egyptian/Roman rooms


Tonight for the fourth the school is throwing a little party in the basement of one of the buildings. They opened a nightclub down there (yes, with alcohol, pool tables and plasma tvs) last week and they want us to use it. So instead of our idea of going to the embassy armed with budweiser and raw meat we are going to celebrate on our alcohol friendly campus. If only North Georgia was so lenient, i'd never go to class.

I came so close to seeing Johnny Depp

Well my mom just informed me that I have a lot of readers :)

If you want to leave me a comment, feel free to do so, it's nice to have messages when you're so far away from home. If you'd rather send me an email, my address is chicasuave@gmail.com

I've got some more pictures (Pirates of the Carribbean movie premiere) but they will go up later. There is a minor heat wave and I can only take so much in the unairconditioned computer lab.


Get this video and more at MySpace.com

The underground is the worst. There is no ventilation and all those bodies pressed up on each other, gross...especially when some UK citizens need to learn to shower more than once a week.

This weekend I am thinking of invading Scotland (and perhaps Dublin). If any of you have any good touristy places to visit, let me know!

Wales: Swansea and Cardiff

Today I ventured out from the motherland into Wales. As soon as I crossed the border into Wales Volcanoes appeared, the sun danced in the sky and these people were speaking MOON LANGUAGE. All of that is a lie except for the moon language. The Welsh language is basically english typed by someone with a hand tremor. For example: Cat = Cwmiyiatgh or Soccer = Football

Swansea (pronounced: Swanzee) is a little town famous for my hero, Dylan Thomas (the poet). I wrote in my travel journal this morning "I would marry him if he wasn't dead". Right.

I hopped on a train at Paddington Station.

Paddington has the most beautiful architecture i've ever seen, and if you look closely at the ceiling you have the typical 'gothic cathedral' setup, where the ceiling is in a cross and etc... you get it, just look at the picture. Paddington Station is the church of the traveler. It took my breath away the first time I saw it.


Paddington Station


Moon language!
Mynnng llyingddag!


my new 80 year old scottish friend who is saying hi to my dad. He basically told me that he thought Dylan Thomas's poetry was just crap and that his words didn't hold any meaning. He started to quote me his own poetry that he wrote for his dead sister. He was very kind and give me directions.


I stopped for some lunch at a pub and this was the basic setup...sort of lonely but I was looking out the window at this:


some random castle ruins in the middle of Swansea


Beer and Sandwich, brunch of champions

After lunch, I retreated back to the train and proceeded east to Cardiff, where while I was fruitlessly searching for H&M I stumbled on this:



and


2,000 year old castle! Get this, nearly every town in England has a castle or a really old cathedral. This one castle just happened to be built by the Romans. It was owned in the 1800s by the Duke of Butte, who enthusiastically had everything painted in gold leaf. According to my tour guide, Butte made a billion £/year in the 1800s...that is like Oprah's salary x 4.

The tour for the Duke of Butte's castle only cost £5.60 for a student so I jumped on it. One of the rooms in the house called the 'Arab Room' is designed to look like a harem. Guess who designed it? WILLIAM BURGESS. The tour guide said he was an odd fellow who was eccentric, so maybe it runs in the fam. That would explain a lot.


The stairs were everywhere in the castle. I basically had to sit on my butt and scoot down them because my shoes were slipping off the polished stone. The stairs were about half the size of a normal stair. Claire 0, Castles 1.


no shit sherlock


and moi, the traveling claire extrodinaire


After my castle adventure I found H&M and also a Hare Krishna musical parade. I didn't actually realize they were walking next to me for about five minutes. I kept wondering where the sound was coming from...doh

I bought the CUTEST top at H&M to make the whole wales trip worthwhile and then climbed back on the train at Cardiff and had my two hour voyage back to London town. When I arrived I climbed aboard Hammersmith and City line only to find out every underground line was practically closed. I walked from Euston Station about two miles back to the dorms. So after walking around Swansea for two hours and Cardiff for three...and then London for a while I have no calves left. The End.

ps. After today I will reiterate my statement made before my trip with emphasis..."If I don't lose weight on this trip I will be REALLY MAD."