2/3 - 2/9 Week 4

Monday I started off the week pretty chill with my 2 classes. That night my friends and I sat down and tried to look at flights and get our spring break situated. We had an idea of what we wanted, but we also wanted to see what another group of people were doing (because almost everyone is going to Italy for Spring Break!), to see if we could meet up or if our plans would overlap. At the end of the night we only booked our return flight home (from Rome back to London) and a train ride from Florence to Rome. So we still have quite a bit to think about!
Tuesday I had my internship, and for my Modern Brit class we got to visit Trafalgar Square and the National Portrait Museum. It was freezing cold walking outside in Trafalgar, but the portrait museum was warm and toasty :) We got to look around, but also had to pick a portrait to talk about for class next week. I ended up picking Zaha Hadid's LED color changing portrait. Its quite unique, I wasn't even going to chose it until my professor nudged me over there and was saying she was surprised that no one picked it yet, and that is was her favorite. I decided to jump on that, only mildly sucking up - but after researching Hadid I'm glad I chose her portrait. After that I quickly went home, grabbed something to eat and was off again to see a performance of "Lady in Black" for my theatre class. My professor was quite enthusiastic to take us to this play, and after going I would have to say it was pretty good! I was a little skeptical, because I knew it was suppose to be a scary play (anyone see the movie version with Daniel Radcliff? - I didn't even see it because I herd it was so scary) and I have never seen a "scary" play before. Really, how scary can something be when its right in front of you and you can see all the actors with no "OMG what is going to pop out because of all these creepy jump shots". Needless to say, it was kind scary! Multiple times majority of the theatre jumped and even screamed at some parts. The play was pretty unique as well, because there was only 2 actors and they only had 3 props. The plot of the play was that these 2 guys were putting on a performance of one of the main guy's scary ghost encounter (so a play within a play). The men would then change characters to play different people in the story, and their props would just be moved around to become different objects. They excited it beautifully and definitely made it work.

Trafalgar Square

Wednesday was my intern and theatre class, but around mid afternoon I started feeling really sick, and by the time the theatre class ended I thought I was going to faint or pass out! I was feeling really dizzy and tired and a tad nauseous, that when I got home I just took a shower and went straight to bed. Which was around 8:30 pm, which could have been 4:00 because we stay up so late each night that it felt like I was going to bed very early evening.
By Thursday morning I was feeling pretty good again, it only left me with a mild sore throat.I had my long intern day (where I actually attended my first meeting!) with a chill night to follow. Some of my roommates and I went to Betsy Trotwood, which is a pub less than 50 ft away from our front gate. I'm surprised I hadn't been there yet, some of my roommates had, but that was my first time in there. It was cute, it had a piano in the corner and a lot of old time posters around. The bartenders were actually the funniest part; they seemed pretty drunk and proceeded to play ABBA music for the rest of the night periodically dancing with each other.
Friday I had off of my internship, so my roommates Tara, Erin, Amanda and I rented bikes and biked around Hyde park. It was a beautiful day and even sunny! We stopped at some gardens, Sperpentine lake (which the park surrounds) and princess Diana's memorial fountain. The fountain was quite unique, and looked more like a little circle stream rather than a fountain. While walking around we came up with a pretty deep analysis of the fountain, the way the water flowed, half laughing at how analytical and accurate we were. That night we got dressed up and decided to go to a fancier bar called Zenna. We all went in with no expectations, and it was super fun! They had really modern dance remixes and every song they played I knew. Some guy even started dancing with me and we ended up dancing the whole night - it was fun dancing too! We held hands like we were swing dancing, and he spun me a lot. Probably the best dance-night I've had yet.

 Hyde Park lake

 Tara bike riding in front of me - such a beautiful trail!

Saturday Erin, Becka, Amanda and I went to the National British Museum. We saw the Rosetta Stone, Easter Island head, a bunch of Roman statues and other old things. There was this one exhibit that really caught my attention. I walked up to this super long table trying to figure out what covered it (it looked like beads or something) but when I read the plaque about it, it was actually covered it medicine! The whole table was covered in pills (aprox. 40,000) which is how much 1 person takes in their lifetime. It was crazy to think about, and there was even pictures framed around the pills that people had submitted that made it feel personal. That night we found this cheap Chinese take away place up the road and brought it back to our flat and watched Slumdog Millionaire.

 So many pills….

On Sunday Tara, Becka, Gracie and I went to Greenwhich to visit the Greenwhich market. We had to take the aboveground train and head east to get there, which passed right through the "Business district". It was so cool! It was like we went into a whole new city, of which I had no clue even existed in London. We passed some of the rougher/suburbs of east London before arriving into the futuristic building utopia. When we got off in Greenwhich and went to the market, it was a typical cute market. I liked this one though because it had both food and artsy crafty booths. Even though it was only around 1pm when we finished up at the market, it was so windy and cold out that we didn't want to walk around anymore. We went back to the flat and took naps/worked on homework until later when Tara, Erin and I tried to go to mass at Westminster Abbey. I say "try" because even though we went, it was only a 25 minute service pretty much solely geared toward tourists. When I checked the mass times that morning I noticed there was "Eucharist" in the morning, and this evening service was just called "Mass" - so I figured they might not have the Eucharist but was a lithe disappointed by how short it was! I am definitely going back and attending an actual Eucharistic Mass some time. Although the service was short, getting to see the inside of the church was quite beautiful! So ornate and intricate, there are even graves right under the floor. The whole front half of the church was actually blocked off but that didn't even matter. I tried to picture getting married there and got overwhelmed - props to Kate for making it look so easy. Off to bed then to start a new week!