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Published: June 17th 2012
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Prime Meridian!
Well sort of. This is our own line that was relatively close to the real line. I went into my kitchen today to take inventory of what was there and what I needed to buy and I had the upmost pleasure of finding raw chicken on the counter. I edged a step further to make sure my eyes were not deceiving me and to my pleasant surprise I saw the "eat before ___ date" was a solid 7 days ago. Yummy. While I'm not quite sure how long it has been there, the smell of the kitchen would suggest it's been there for a while. Although I'm having trouble differentiating the smell of rotting raw chicken from the smell of the fridge. I think the best part though is the smell is starting to creep out of the kitchen and getting ever so close to my room. When I went downstairs to ask the front desk dude what to do, he said the kitchen was cleaned every two days. Yeah right. SARS step aside, I'm getting salmonella long beforehand!!
Apart from any diseases I'm sure I will be picking up soon, the past couple of days have been great. Yesterday we went on a boat cruise on the River Thames to Greenwich. I'm sure the tour
Opening Ceremony
This is where the opening ceremony is going to take place in a couple of weeks! guide to Greenwich is great, but being on a boat for an extended period of time, combined with the lack of sleep I've had in the past couple of days, put me to sleep in about 15 minutes. Not quite sure my professor liked turning around to see me fast asleep but I wasn't the only one so oh well.
Greenwich was a really cute, touristy town. There was a huge flea market set up in the middle right when we got off the boat. There were all kinds of differnent foods you could buy, ranging from Japanese to Thai to Italian to Turkish to everything in between. Mixed in with all of the food were individuals selling cool souvenirs. I saw a lot of cool sterling silver rings, postcards, tea, cider, spoons, mugs, etc which were all somewhat priced okay. After browsing, a couple of us decided to go eat a good old fashioned cheeseburger at a local sit down place where we enjoyed the biggest milkshakes of our lives. I'm not sure that the British think that ketchup is the nectar of the gods because they hide it in tomatoes. It took us a good five minutes
The Queen's House
Not sure when the last time the queen resided in this house was because there is 0 furniture, but it has a nice view. to figure out where the ketchup was!
After lunch we explored Greenwich a little more. We walked through the Queen's house (although I feel like I've done that a number of times in a number of different places) and made our way up to the observatory, hoping to stand on the Prime Meridian. Unfortunately, in order to stand on a man made invisible line, you have to pay 10 pounds, which is at least three meals or a good portion of a Phantom of the Opera ticket, so we decided to make up our own line. We also could see a great view of the entire city of London, in addition to a number of Olympic venues, including the athlete training center, where the opening ceremonies will be held, and also where the horse arena events will be held. However, I'm not quite sure why horses are in the Olympics because I'm pretty sure the Olympics are supposed to be a sports competition between humans, not horses. Hmm...
After Greenwich, the professors surprised us by taking us to a local pub and buying us all drinks. I was introduced to pimm, which is some kind of alcoholic drink
Work!
This is where we're going to be working tomorrow. Take special notice of all of the Olympic stuff on the building :) with a salad inside. Literally a salad. There were cucumbers, strawberries, lemons, and some other salad-looking green things inside of my drink, and no one was quite sure what the actual alcohol was that was inside. Nevertheless, it was delicious!
This morning we all made our way to the hotel where our professors have been staying for the past week. We had a full English breakfast in their hotel, before saying goodbye and wishing them a safe flight home. I think we'll all be sad to see them go but I think we'll be sadder to start having to pay the bills for all of our meals!
After bidding them goodbye, we all took a practice run to our work offices tomorrow. My office is this huge building with Olympic stuff all over it. I'm really excited to find out what I'm doing tomorrow but I can't believe our orientation week is over--no more being tourists!
And now, I'm off to buy a gas mask and rubber gloves and other fun things so I don't get secondhand salmonella. More to come soon, as long as I don't die of salmonella beforehand.
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