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Published: January 27th 2008
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It's been an eventful week, but it's also seemed to fly by. Class has been good, though rather uneventful for the most part. My digital photojournalism class did take a trip to The Photographer's Gallery which is just a short walk from the University. The gallery had a few exhibitions, one by Antoine d'Agata entitled, "Insomnia" was interesting but slightly unsettling and disturbing. The photographs in the collection were blurry, usually capturing some type of movement, they had a dreamlike atmosphere to them.
On Thursday night I got together with one of our British friends and went to see Beowulf in 3D at the Imax theater by the Thames (Tems, not TH-ames). It was also the first time that I'd seen Big Ben and The Houses of Parliament at night. They are absolutely beautiful. Just a side note, "Big Ben" is not actually the name of the clock and tower, it's really just the name of the bell inside.
Friday night was an awesome night out with all of the girls, we went dancing and just had a really fun time meeting people and all spending time together. The only thing is that I need to consider how much
Bloomsbury Bowling
Welcome to Huron party walking we do here when making shoe decisions in the future; high heels are not always the best choice.
Saturday and Sunday were full of lots of sightseeing and visiting some of England's landmarks for me. On Saturday I took a bus trip to Stonehenge and Bath. Stonehenge is about 2 hours south of London and Bath is about an hour from Stonehenge. It was so nice to get out of the city for a little bit and see green rolling hills. Stonehenge is surrounded by fields and some sheep. You aren't allowed to walk in the circle of stones but there was a footpath all the way around. I bet that it would be really beautiful to see it silhouetted against the sky when the sun was setting too. I was just happy that Saturday and Sunday were clear and rain free. It was pretty amazing to think about ancient people bringing the stones hundreds of miles using ropes and logs to move them across the countryside. From there we went on Bath, the site of England's only natural hot spring. The Romans built a bath there and it was restored in the 18th century and frequented by
Walking home
Rachel, Aussie friend, and Jackie in the back. Casy and Jordan up front. the social elite of English society. I wouldn't want to go in the water now, but it was interesting to imagine what it must have looked like during the peak of it's use and popularity. Bath was also a nice city; the architecture was from the Georgian period and there were many attractive buildings and shops.
Today I went on a tour of the Tower of London. We heard lots of stories about the many uses of the Tower, particularly stories about people who were imprisoned and executed there. I learned that one prisoner did escape with the help of his wife and her ladies in waiting. She was permitted to visit every day and she arrived in the evenings with her ladies. The ladies would come and go from the room so the guard would lose track of how many people were in the room with her husband. One night they dressed him as a woman and he snuck out, pretending to be one of the women, crying profusely. His wife staged a two way conversation in the cell by imitating his voice. When it was time for her to leave, she told the guard not to disturb
her husband because he was going to say his prayers and go straight to bed. Romantic me liked this story. After the Tower of London, we got some pub food and then went on a Thames riverboat ride down to Greenwich and then back down to Waterloo Pier where the London Eye is. It was very cold on top of the boat, especially as it started to get dark, but it was so nice to be out on the water. I had forgotten how much I love it. I think I'm starting to love the Thames as well. The London Eye was also spectacular, or rather the views from it were. The eye itself is a big part of the skyline at that part of the Thames. My friend told me that there was a lot of debate about it's construction in 2000 because some just felt that it was going to be a giant ferris wheel. It's supposed to be a type of monument. It takes half an hour to go all the way around and when you're up there, lights stretch out as far as you can see in every direction. I hadn't realized just how big London
is until I saw it from that height tonight.
In other news, I'm doing pretty well with figuring out the tube. We had to find an alternate route to Tower Hill station today because the Circle line was closed and it wasn't that stressful. The little pocket map of the tube that Regina gave me has been helping a lot.
I don't have class tomorrow, so I'm hoping to get a lot done. I need to get a head start on some work for this week, clean up the flat, engage in the 4 hour process that is doing a load of laundry (seriously), go to the gym, maybe go to Oxford street to look for jeans, and then go to a theater in Marble Arch to see a film with my Arts in London class. Hopefully this week will be as fulfilling as this one.
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Aaron
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Kimberly, Kimberly lets build our house there in the country!!!!!